









^ .^^\-. 














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THE 



PUBLIC LIFE 



OF 



QUEEN VICTOKIA 



BY 



JOHN M^GILCHRIST, 




/ 

FELT AND DILLINGHAM, 
455, BROOME STREET, NEW YORK. 



J3A56-(r 



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CONTENTS, 



CHAPTEE I. 

ANCESTRY. 

PAUE 

Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, the Protector of Luther 
— Staunch Protestantism of the Queen's Saxon Forefathers 
— House of Saxe-Coburg — A Saxon Desperado of the Middle 
Ages— A Fighting Hero of the Eighteenth Century — The 
Queen's Grandmother a Woman of Extraordinary Excellence 
irreat Alliances in the Marriages of her Uncles and Aunts, 1 



CHAPTER II. 

THE GREATEST OF THE MODERN COBURGS. 

Romantic Career of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the Queen's 
Uncle — His Continuous, Kind, and Fatherly Care of his 
Orphaned Niece — The Duchy of Coburg held by Napoleon — 
Sufferings of the Ducal Family— A Temptation resisted — 
The Tide turned — Leopold's Popularity in England— Be- 
trothal and Marriage to the Princess Charlotte of Wales . P 

CHAPTER III. 

PARENTAGE AND BIRTH OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

How the Princess Victoria came to be Heiress Presumptive to the 
Throne— Death of the Princess Charlotte — Marriages of the 
Royal Dukes— Of the Duke of Kent— Birth of the Princess 
Alexandrina Victoria — Prediction of George IV.— Death of 
the Duke of Kent— His Character— His Liberal Opinions— 
PubHc Condolence with the Widow and Orphan— Early Life 
of the Duchess of Kent I't 



IV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

FIRST TEAES OF CHILDHOOD. 

PAGE 

Old Memories of Kensington Palace — Enlargements of the Struc- 
ture by William III., Anne, Queen Caroline, and the Duke 
of Sussex— Maids of Honour — Rank and Beauty in the 
Gardens — Wilberforce and the Infant Princess — Victoria at 
Ramsgate — A Picture of Victoria when Five Years Old — 
Her Physical Training — Popularity as a Child— Her Youthful 
Charities — A Narrow Escape from Death— Early Develop- 
ment of Quick Intelligence— Anecdotes — Love of Nature — 
Proneness to Self- Will — But Counterbalanced by Candour — 
Waggishness — A Portrait of the Child-Princess by Leigh 
Hunt 23 

CHAPTER V. 

EDUCATION OF THE PEINCESS VICTORIA. 

Additional Grant by Parliament for the Maintenance and Educa- 
tion of the Princess — Wise Lessons learned at her Mother's 
Knee — A Visit to George IV. at Windsor — Assiduous Pur- 
suit of Knowledge — Accession of William IV. — Victoria 
becomes next in Succession to the Crown — Regency Bill — 
Satisfaction of the Good Grandmother at Coburg — Her 
Death— Joy of Victoria at the Elevation of her Uncle to the 
Belgian Throne — Parliamentary Inquiry into the Progress of 
her Education — Satisfactory Report in Response— Presented 
at Court — Great Ball on her Twelfth Birthday at St. James's 
Palace — Court Scandal and Baseless Rumours — The Duchess 
of Northumberla,nd appointed Governess — The Princess and 
the Poet Southey 37 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE PRINCESS IN HER TEENS. 

Visits paid to many parts of England — Love of Cathedrals and 
Church Music — Trip to North Wales and the Midland 
Counties— Visit to a Cotton Mill— To Oxford — Gala Day at 
Southampton — Interview with the Young Queen of Portugal 
— Confirmation of the Princess— Tour to the North — York 
Musical Festival — At Ramsgate with the King of the Bel- 
gians — A Noble Deed at Tunbridge Wells .... 47 



CONTENTS. V 

CHAPTER VII. 

EARLY DAYS OF PRINCE ALBERT, „.„„ 

PAGE 

Birth— Melancholy Story of his Mother — Brought up under the 
Care of his Two Excellent Grandmothers — His Winning Ways 
as a Child— His Tutor, Florschiitz — The Brothers, Ernest 
and Albert — Visit to Brussels, and its Beneficial Effects — 
Hard Study — Tour through Germany, &c. — First Visit to 
England, and Meeting with Victoria— Studies at Brussels- 
Enters the University of Bonn — Tour to Switzerland and 
Italy — Public Announcement of Betrothal — Leaves Coburg 
and Gotha for his Marriage 52 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PRINCESS VICTORIA BECOMES QUEEN REGNANT. 

First Meeting of the Princess Victoria and Prince Albert— Coming 
of Age— Festivities on the Occasion — Death of William IV., 
and Accession of Victoria — The Queen holds her First Privy 
Council — Her Address — Proclamation as Queen at St. 
James's Palace — Beautiful Traits of Character displayed 
by the Queen — Stirring and Gorgeous Scene— Delight of 
the People at the Queen's Accession 61 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE MAIDEN QUEEN. 

Removal to Buckingham Palace — First Levee— rDissolves Parlia- 
ment — Beauty of her Elocution — Splendid Reception by the 
City of London — Settlement of the Queen's Income— Her 
Daily Life — Her Admirable Knowledge of, and Devotion to, 
the Business of the State — Reverence for the Lord's Day , 69 

CHAPTER X. 

THE QUEEN CROWNED. 

Novel Features in the Coronation— Its Cpst— Large Amount of 
Money Circulated — Splendour of the Procession — Enormous 
Crowds — The Scene within the Abbey — Arrival of the Queen 
— The Regalia and Sacred Vessels — Costume of the Queen — 
Astonishment of the Turkish Ambassador at the Scene — 
The Coronation Ceremony — The Queen's Oath — The Anoint- 
ing — The Crown placed on her Head— The Homage— An 
Aged Peer — The Queen's Crown — The Illuminations and 
General Festivities— Fair in Hyde Park— The Duke of Wel- 
lington and Marshal Soult at the Guildhall .... 75 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE BEDCHAMBER PLOT. 

PAGE 

Eesignation of Lord Melbourne's Cabinet — Sir Eobert Peel sent 
for — Fails to form a Cabinet — His Explanation — The Queen 
refuses to Dismiss her Ladies of the Bedchamber — Sup- 
ported by her late Ministers — Sir Eobert Peel's Objections — 
The Queen will not give way — The Whigs recalled to 
Power — Public Opinion on the Dispute — The Whig Ministers 
blamed, and the Queen exculpated 8i 

CHAPTER XII. 

COURTSHIP AND . BETROTHAL. 

Desire of the Coburg Relatives for a Marriage between Victoria 
and Albert — Favourable Impressions mutually made by 
Victoria and Albert — Prince Albert's Letter on the Queen's 
; Accession — Opposition of King William IV. to the Marriage 
• — Correspondence between the Cousins — King Leopold 
Urges on the Marriage — The Queen's Eeluctance to become 
Betrothed — Her subsequent Regret at this— The Prince 
craves a definite Determination — His Second Visit to 
England— Betrothed at Last — Returns to Germany to say 
Farewell .91 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE QUEEN WEDDED. 

Announcement of the Intended Marriage to the Privy Council 
and Parliament — Parliamentary Settlement of the Prince's 
Rank, &c. — Annoying Circumstances — The Prince's Pro- 
testantism — His Income — Arrival of the Bridegroom — Re- 
ceives a National Welcome — The Wedding— Honeymoon 
Spent at Windsor 100 

"^ CHAPTER XIV. 

EARLY TEARS OP MARRIED LIPE. 

Difficulties and Delicacy of Prince Albert's Position— Early 
Married Life— Studies continued — Attempts on the Queen's 
Life — Courage of the Queen — Birth of the Princess Royal — • 
Parting from the Whig Ladies of the Bedchamber — Dark 
Days for England — Birth of the Prince of Wales — The 
Queen Described by M. G-uizot — A Dinner at Buckingham 
Palace — State Dinner at Windsor 110 



CONTENTS. Vll 

CHAPTEE XV. 

THE QUEEN IN SCOTLAND. 

PAGE 

Christening'of the Prince of Wales — Manufacturing Distress — 
The Queen's Efforts to alleviate it — Assesses Herself to the 
Income Tax— Resolves to Visit Scotland — Embarks at 
Woolwich — Beacon Fires in the Firth of Forth— Landing on 
Scottish Soil — A Disappointment — ^Formal Entry into Edin- 
burgh — Eichness of Historical and Ancestral Associations — 
The Queen on the Castle Eock — A Highland Welcome — De- 
parture from Scotland 126 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

WHAT ENGLAND OWES TO PRINCE ALBERT. 

Tbe Prince's Study of our Laws and Constitution — Two Miscon- 
.ceptions Outlived — His Versatility — His First Speech an 
Anti-Slavery one — His Appreciation and Judicious Criticism 
of Art — Scientific Side of his Mind — As an Agriculturist . 141 



CHAPTEE XVII. 

FOREIGN TRAVEL AND HOME VISITS. 

Visit to King Louis Philippe at Eu — A Loyal Corporation — 
Splendid Eeception of the Queen in France— Anecdote of 
the Queen's Eegard for Prince Albert — Visit of the Czar 
Nicholas — Home Life in Scotland — Visit to Germany — Illu- 
minations of the Ehine— A Eural Fete at Coburg . . 14.9 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 

THE QUEEN IN IRELAND. 

First Visit to Ireland — Eapturous Eeception at Cork— Queens- 
town so denominated — Enthusiasm at Dublin— Its Graceful 
Recognition by the Queen— Visit to the Dublin Exhibition 
— Encouragement of Native Industry — Visit to the Lakes of 
KUlarney— The Whirligig of Time 157 



VIU CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE world's congress OF INDUSTRY, 

PAGE 

Prince Albert the Inaugurator of International Exhibitions- 
Proposes, Unsuccessfully, his Scheme to the Government — 
To the Society of Arts, Successfully— First Steps towards 
Eealisation— Objections to be Met— Perseverance of the 
Prince— The Royal Commission — The Prince's Speech at 
York— The Opening Ceremony— The Royal Procession . 164 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE WAR CLOUD. 

Bright Hopes of Peace Dispelled— An Era of War all over the 
Wprld— The Russian War— The Queen's Visits to the 
Wounded Soldiers — Presentation of the War Medals- 
Crimean Heroes--The Volunteer Movement . . . • 172 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THE QUEEN IN HER HIGHLAND HOME. 

The Queen as an Author— "The Early Years of the Prince 
Consort" — "Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the 
Highlands" — Love for Children of all Ranks — Mountain 
Ascents on Pony-back — In Fingal's Cave — "The Queen's 
Luck" — Salmon-spearing, and a Catastrophe attending it — 
Erection of a Memorial Cairn— Freedom of Intercourse with 
Humble Highlanders— Visits to Cottagers—" Mrs. Albert" 
— Travelling Incognito— Highland Dinners—" A Wedding- 
Party frae Aberdeen " — A Disguise Detected • . . 186 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE WIDOWED QUEEN. 

Unbroken Happiness of the Queen's Life up to 1861— Death of 
the Duchess of Kent— The Prince Consort slightly Ailing- 
Catches Cold at Cambridge and Eton— The Malady becomes 
Serious— Public Alarm— Rapid Sinking, and Death— Sorrow 
of the People— The Queen's Fortitude— Avoidance of Court 
Display— Good Deeds — Sympathy with all Benevolent 
Actions— Letter of Condolence to the Widow of President 
Lincoln— The " Albert Medal "—Conclusion . . .194 



LIFE OF QUEEN YICTOEIA. 



CHAPTEK I. 

ANCESTRY. 

Frederick tlie Wise, Elector of Saxony, the Protector of Lutlier — 
Staunch Protestantism of the Queen's Saxon Forefathers — House 
of Saxe-Coburg — A Saxon Desperado of the Middle Ages — A 
Fighting Hero of the Eighteenth Century — The Queen's Grand- 
mother a Woman of Extraordinary Excellence — Great Alliances in 
the Marriages of her Uncles and Aunts. 

Queen Yictoria is, through her mother, descended — 
and her children are descended by the double line of 
both their parents — from the great, good, and glorious 
Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony early in the 
sixteenth century, who was one of the first to embrace 
the principles of Luther's Keformation, and whose name 
still stands out so nobly and brightly as the staunch 
and courageous protector of the great Heformer. The 
Ernestine branch of this great Saxon house, from which 
the Queen and the Prince Consort both derived their 
descent, have ever, though at great cost and injury to 
themselves at many periods of their history, remained 
true to the principles thus early adopted by their 
common ancestor; and they have ever considered it 
p-s the brightest glory of their race, that they can 



2 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

proudly point to tliis unquestionable fact. When 
one of the most distinguished members — if, indeed, he 
was not the most illustrious scion — of this family, the 
Queen's maternal uncle, Leopold, King of the Belgians, 
made a journey into Scotland, to allay the pangs of the 
bereavement which he had suffered in the untimely 
death of his young wife, the Princess Charlotte, he paid 
a visit of a few days' duration to Sir Walter Scott at 
Abbotsford. While there, an aged and reverend Scottish 
divine was presented to the Prince. The clergyman, in 
the course of the interview, made complimentary refer- 
ence to this fact in the descent of the Prince. Prince 
Leopold, in reply, stated that this was the first notice 
which had been taken of the circumstance in his pre- 
sence since the day of his first arrival in England, and 
that he felt more honoured by it than by any other 
tribute which had been paid to him and his family. 

The curious in such matters, those for whom the 
minute particularity of authenticated genealogical detail 
possesses a charm, with which the compiler of these pages 
acknowledges that he is himself affected, but which it 
would be unfair to such of his readers as do not share 
this taste to minister to at excessive length — such we 
refer to the Peverend Edward Tauerschmidt's "Brief 
Historical Account of the Dukedom and Ducal House of 
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha." There they will find the full 
pedigree, with no link wanting, which connects Her 
Majesty, and equally her first cousin and spouse, by the 
links of twenty-five generations, with the Saxon Earl 
Theodoric, or Dideric, of the House of Bucizi, who is 
recorded to have died in the year of our Lord 982. We 
content ourselves with proceeding at a leap to the reign 



"A GLIMPSE OP SAXON HISTOEY.'* 3 

of Frederick the Benignant, Elector of Saxony, who was 
thirteenth in descent from Earl Theodoric, and died in 
1464. In a most fascinating article which was con- 
tributed by Mr. Carlyle to the January number of the 
WestmiTister Review for the year 1855, entitled, "A 
Glimpse of Saxon History," a most romantic incident 
of this Elector's reign is narrated with the writer's cus- 
tomary graphic power. This potentate had a " fighting 
captain " in his employ, by name Kunz von Kaufungen. 
Eighting for his master, he was captured, and being a 
warrior of importance, was amerced in the heavy ransom 
of a sum equal to 2,000 English pounds. This he paid, 
but expected to be indemnified by Frederick. This 
expectation, for some reason, was not fulfilled. Kunz, 
exasperated, swore to be avenged. On the 7th of July, 
1455, Kunz entered the town of Altenburg, at the head 
of a party of thirty men. Having bribed one of the 
servants to treachery, they obtained admission into the 
Electoral castle, from which they carried oflf Frederick's 
two sons, the Princes Ernest and Albert. The Electress 
soon discovered her loss, and the desperadoes had not pro- 
ceeded far on their several ways (they had divided into 
two bands, each having one of the children), ere they 
were hotly pursued. Kunz himself headed that moiety 
of his force who bore with them Ernest, the elder boy 
and the more valuable hostage. The pursuers caused 
alarms to be rung from the village spires, and amongst 
others of the peasantry who were aroused, was a rough 
charcoal-burner, who, encountering the party of Kunz, 
"belaboured him with the poking-pole" which he used 
in his vocation, and to such effect that he vanquished 
the abductor, rescued the boy, and had the happiness of 

B 2 



4 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

restoring liim to the arms of his agonised mother. When 
asked, wonderingly and admiringly, how he dared to 
attack so formidable a foe, he replied to his fair and 
grateful querist, "Madam, I drilled him soundly with 
my poking-pole." From that day he was known by no 
other name than the Driller — der Triller, Kunz was 
consigned to the block, while the Driller, and deliverer, 
■was oflfered any reward he chose to name. This true 
man — a mediaeval "Miller of the Dee" — asked no other 
recompense than "only liberty to cut, of scrags and 
waste wood, what will suffice for my charring purposes." 
This was at once granted, along with the freehold of a 
snug farm, and an annual and ample allowance of corn 
from the barns of the Electors. All was secured to him 
and his posterity by formal deed, and his descendants to 
this day enjoy the privileges so valiantly earned by their 
ancestor four centuries ago. From the two princes so 
rescued, descended respectively the Ernestine and the 
Albertine branches of the Saxon house. The Queen is — 
as her husband was — twelfth in descent from the little 
Prince Ernest, who became the progenitor of the former 
line. 

The parent stock had boasted among other meritorious 
or distinguished representatives the names of Conrad the 
Great, Otho the Eich, Henry the Illustrious, three 
Fredericks, dubbed respectively the Serious, the Warlike, 
and the Benignant ; whilst, as disparaging sets-off, either 
demerit or misfortune was indicated, in the instance of 
other Electors, by these sobriquets — the Oppressed, the 
Degenerate, the Severe, and, strangest of all, Frederick- 
with-the- Wounded- Cheek. This habit of designating the 
successive Electors by their moral or other peculiarities, 



THE QUEEH'S SAXON ANCESTOES. 5 

or by the incidents or accidents of their careers, was 
continued but for a few generations of the Ernestine 
branch of the bifurcated line. It contained a Magnani- 
mous Frederick, and a Fiery Ernest, after whose death, 
in 1675, this pleasing plan of picturesque designation no 
longer meets the eye of the student. 

The chivalrous protection which Frederick the Mag- 
nanimous — or the Wise, as he is sometimes also denomi- 
nated — spread as a buckler over Luther and the 
Lutherans cost him his birthright. The bigoted 
Charles Y. diverted, in 1547, the Electoral dignity from 
the Ernestine to the Albertine branch, and the fortunes 
of the house cannot be said to have been fully restored 
until the Treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, ratified as its main 
provisions were by that of Vienna, seven years later. 

Coming down to more recent times, and to the 
Queen's more immediate ancestry, we find the old spirit 
which these brave Saxon princes represented in the stir- 
ring mediseval and Reforming days, abundantly maintained 
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and notably 
so on the field of battle, in the great wars with which the 
names of Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, Suwarow, 
and Napoleon are associated. Francis Josias was twenty- 
second of the line, and the Queen's great-great-grand- 
father. His great-grandson, the late King Leopold, says 
of him, that he was " much looked up to." He was a 
tall and powerful man, but disfigured by having lost an 
eye at tennis, a game then very popular on the Continent. 
One of his grandsons, a Prince Frederick Josias, served 
with distinction in the Seven Years' War, in one of the 
battles of which he was shot through the hand. He was 
subsequently employed in high positions by the Empress 



6 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTOEIA, 

Maria Theresa, and made a great name for Mmself against 
tlie Turks. Suwarow and he extricated the Emperor 
Joseph, the son of the Empress, from utter failure, and 
conquered the Principalities. He afterwards fought 
against Dumouriez in the Netherlands, and gained the 
battle of Neerwinden, in 1793, near Tirlemont ; "one of 
the greatest battles of modern history," says his nephew, 
King Leopold, a most competent authority on the 
subject. He says that, but for the inaction of the Dutch 
contingent, and the insane attempt of the Duke of York 
to conquer Dunkirk, the allies, after this victory, which 
cleared the Netherlands of the French, might as easily 
have marched upon Paris as the forces of Wellington and 
Blucher did after Waterloo. 

The Queen's grandfather, suffering early in life from 
exceedingly bad health, was cast in a much less energetic 
mould, but his character was eminently benevolent and 
loveable, and he had a knowledge and love of the fine 
arts, which Prince Albert, in the highest degree of all his 
descendants, inherited. The Queen's grandmother, who 
was of the Keuss-Ebersdorff family, was equally warm- 
hearted, possessed a powerful mind, and "loved her 
grandchildren most tenderly." We shall have much to 
say of her in subsequent pages. 

Of the Queen's aunts, one, after declining many eligible 
offers in her own princely rank, mamed Count Mensdorff- 
Pouilly, a French emigrant of the Eevolution, who entered 
the Austrian service, and became the father of the well- 
known Austrian statesman. Count Arthur Mensdorff, 
who was the bosom friend of Prince Albert from his 
earliest infancy until his untimely death. A second 
married the reigning Duke of Wurtemburg, and occupied 



►i^E HOUSE OP SAXE-COBURG. 7 

for many years a very influential position in Eussia, her 
husband being brother of the Empress Catherine (the 
second of that name), and maternal uncle of the 
Emperors Alexander and Nicholas. The third daughter 
of the house herself became a Russian Grand Duchess ; 
she was wedded at the age of fifteen to the Grand Duke 
Constantine. The marriage was an inharmonious one, 
and in 1802 the young pair agreed to separate. Both 
husband and wife 'were acquitted of all blame ; Leopold, 
the brother of the latter, attributes the sad event to " the 
shocking hypocrisy of the Empress-mother," in the 
absence of which " things might have gone on." The 
Queen's mother, who was christened Victoire (or Victoria) 
Marie Louise, was the youngest of the four sisters. 
Besides Duke Ernest, the father of Prince Albert, the 
Queen had two other maternal uncles. One was Frederick 
George, who married a great heiress, the Hungarian 
Princess of Kohary. His son became the consort of 
Donna Maria II. of Portugal ; his grandson, the present 
King of Portugal, is the Queen's first cousin once 
removed, and the second cousin of her children. Her 
other uncle was the late King of the Belgians, whose 
career is a portion of the history of our grandfathers', our 
fathers', and our own times, and is so intimately associated 
with the life and fortunes of Her Majesty as to merit 
separate treatment in a succeeding chapter, and else- 
where incidentally in the course of our narrative. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE GREATEST OF THE MODERN COBURGS. 

Romantic Career of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coturg, tlie Queen's 
Uncle — his Continuous, Kind, and Fatherly Care of his Orphaned 
Niece — The Duchy of Cohurg held by Napoleon — Sufferings of 
the Ducal Family — A Temptation resisted — The Tide turned — 
Leopold's Popularity in England — Betrothal and Marriage to the 
Princess Charlotte of Wales. 

Born in tlie year 1790, Prince Leopold was a soldier and 
in the saddle when he was fifteen years of age. In 1805, 
that war broke out between Napoleon and Austria, in 
which the power of the Kaiser was so near being de- 
stroyed. The health of the Duke Francis, Leopold's father, 
was fast failing him, and the tremendous sorrows and 
sufferings inflicted by the victorious French upon Ger- 
many, hastened the rapidity of his descent to the grave. 
Ernest, the eldest son, and Leopold hurriedly left Coburg 
to join the Bussian army in Moravia. Their only other 
brother was akeady in an Austrian regiment of Hussars. 
Ere Leopold could flesh his sword, Austerlitz had been 
fought and lost, and Austria was thoroughly crippled. 
He returned to Coburg to witness his father's death. 
The French were in .possession of the town and Duchy, 
and when they learned that the new Duke was with their 
Prussian foe, they appointed a military intendant, a M. 
Yilain — in nature as well as in name, so Leopold after- 
wards recorded. The Ducal family were reduced to such 



PRINCE LEOPOLD OP SAXE-COBURG. '9 

straits, that they depended for their very sustenance upon 
the clandestine benefactions of the Governmental sub- 
ordinates, surlily winked at by their French masters. The 
Duchess set off on a journey to Warsaw to endeavour to 
propitiate Napoleon ; but she was permitted to proceed 
no farth-er than Berlin, as Napoleon hated such visits. 
She returned baffled to Coburg, which remained " une 
possession Frangaise." The Peace of Tilsit, among its 
other provisions, "reintegrated" Coburg; but, through 
the greed and treachery of Prussia, the stipulated 
arrangements were never fulfilled. On the ratification 
of the Peace, Duke Ernest came to Coburg for the first 
time to assume his Ducal power and dignity. 

As a matter oi policy, Leopold, with other German 
Princes, now visited Napoleon at Paris, where he was 
courteously received. On his return from Paris, early 
in 1808, he nearly died of scarlet fever. After a very 
tardy and painful recovery, he went, at the end of the 
year, to the Congress of Erfurth, to which he had been 
summoned by the Czar Alexander. He tried there to 
secure to his brother his undimiuished territorial pos- 
sessions, and succeeded in making such a favourable 
impression upon Napoleon that he would have done so, 
but for the impolitic excessiveness of his brother's claims, 
and the apathetic manner in which the Czar supported 
them. The war with Pussia came on, in which he 
eagerly desired to serve against the French ; but 
Napoleon caused it to be known that if he did so his 
brother would be held responsible ; so he had to abide 
in inglorious and detested ease. Napoleon made him 
tempting offers to enter his service, and would have been 
more incensed at his persistent refusal than he was, but 



10 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

for the friendly intercession of Josephine and Queen 
Hortense, her daughter, who were both very friendly to 
the young Prince. 

Meanwhile he turned his eminent talents for dip- 
lomacy to good account. He persuaded Bavaria to return 
to his. brother portions of Coburg territory which that 
state unjustly held, and removed the galling pain of the 
Bavarian flag floating over villages within four English 
miles of the town of Coburg itself 

In 1812 Napoleon's frightful war with Eussia broke 
out. IsTapoleon summoned the subject and enfeebled 
German Princes to Dresden. Duke Ernest was com- 
pelled to go, and Leopold also was cited to the gathering, 
but he went to Vienna, and then to Italy, to keep out of 
the way. It would have been now most dangerous to 
decline the French service, and he was determined at all 
costs not to enter it. "Germany," said he, "was, at the 
beginning of 1812, in the lowest and most humiliating 
position; Austria and Prussia sunk to be auxiliaries; 
everybody frightened and submissive, except Spain, sup- 
ported by England." But Napoleon's reverses in Russia 
soon followed, and they electrified all Germany into new 
courage. The Duke of Coburg posted off to Berlin 
to endeavour to stimulate the perplexed, vacillating, 
and timorous Prussian King into manly and decided 
action. The other brother, Eerdinand, went to Vienna 
on a similar errand. Leopold hied him to Munich to 
stir up the Crown Prince of Bavaria, afterwards King 
Louis. They were all moderately successful, and Leopold 
hastened to Kalisch, in Poland, being the first German 
Prince to join the Army of Liberation. He was equally 
honoured and gratified by being appointed a Major- 



THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE. 11 

General by tlie Czar. He was present at the hard- 
fouglit but indecisive battles of Lutzen and Bautzen. 
There followed an armistice, and a conference at Prague, 
with a view to a definite settlement. This the Prince 
attended. He was the only person admitted to the 
presence of the Emperor of Austria, and spent much of 
his time with the plenipotentiaries Metternich, Hum- 
boldt, Ansted, Gentz, and others. The negotiations broke 
off, and hostilities were resumed. At the decided defeat 
which the French general Yandamme sustained, shortly 
before the crowning victory of Leipsic, Leopold com- 
manded all the alKed cavalry, and distinguished himself 
the more that he was the only general in the field who 
knew the country. He was present, and in high com- 
mand, at Leipsic, where Germany was finally freed. 
After the fight, the Grand Duke Constantine accom- 
panied him to Coburg, visiting the relatives of the wife 
from whom he was now separated, and who lived and 
died in retirement in Switzerland. Amongst others they 
visited the future Duchess of Kent, then Princess of 
Leiningen, her first husband being still alive. Shortly 
afterwards Constantine and Leopold rejoined the army 
in Switzerland, where Leopold tried hard, but in- 
effectually, to effect a reconciliation between his sister 
and her husband. Leopold subsequently entered Paris 
at the head of the cavalry ; his eldest brother procured 
the evacuation of Mayence by its French garrison. The 
three brothers all met in Paris, from which Leopold pro- 
ceeded, in the suite of the Czar, to the great triumphant 
gathering of the Allied Sovereigns in London. Now 
for the first time he met his future bride, the Princess 
Charlotte, only child of the Prince Eegent, and heir to 



12 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

the throne. His splendid continental career already pro- 
pitiated her, as it did all the British people, in his favour. 
The project of a matrimonial union between the gallant 
young general and the still more youthful princess was 
warmly taken up by the leading men in power, including 
Wellington, his brothers, and Castlereagh. The Prince 
Eegent alone was opposed to the project. He was irritated 
by his daughter's repugnance to the Prince of Orange, 
who was destined by him to be his son-in-law, and by 
her recent flight from Carlton House to the residence ot 
her mother. Leopold, however, decidedly succeeded in 
winning the affections of the lady herself, and the nation 
was delighted at the project. The Dukes of York and 
Kent, too, warmly encouraged his suit. On his return 
home he found that his youngest sister had been un- 
expectedly left a widow, and he arranged the guardianship 
and pecuniary affairs of the future mother of England's 
Queen. At the Congress of Yienna, whither he went to 
plead the cause of his brother, his amazing sagacity and 
tact induced the negotiators to make a very satisfactory 
arrangement of frontier. This he settled, to th6 great 
chagrin of Humboldt, the Prussian envoy, who, with the 
Prussian Court and people generally, seems to have been 
extremely spiteful towards the little principality, their 
near neighbour. 

Leopold was not at Waterloo — fought so near the 
capital of his future kingdom. He was posted in Alsace 
in command of an army of observation, which, of course, 
was never needed for action. Leopold went alone to 
Paris, with the leave of the Czar, still animated by the 
purpose of advancing his brother's pretensions; Prussia 
having failed to carry out the rectifications of frontier 



A EOYAL MARRIAGE. 13 

enacted at Yienna tlie year before. He succeeded in 
this object, and hopes of the highest nature were 
engendered about an affair still nearer to his heart. 
Wellington and Castlereagh treated him with marked 
and significant deference. And through the kind inter- 
vention of the good-hearted and simple-minded Duke of 
Kent, he received from his ladye-love some pleasant 
tokens of continued affection and renewed pledges of 
staunch fidelity. He was strongly recommended to 
repair to England and renew and prosecute his wooing 
in person ; but he very astutely declined, thinking it 
unwise to "brave" the Prince Eegent. He went, 
instead, to Vienna, to act as groomsman at the wedding 
of his brother Ferdinand with the great Hungarian 
heiress whose love he had won ; and from thence to 
Berlin, persistently to enforce his brother's twice re- 
cognised and sanctioned rights. At Berlin he received 
a welcome invitation to England from the Ptegent, and 
a most satisfactory letter of '' explanation " from Lord 
Castlereagh. He arrived in London in February, 1816. 
Castlereagh at once took him to Brighton, where the 
Hegent was. He received his daughter's wooer most 
graciously. The old queen and her three daughters 
posted after Leopold from London, and in a family 
council the marriage was definitely agreed on. The 
young couple were married in May, amid the joyful 
acclamations of the whole nation. 



OHAPTEE, III. 

PARENTAGE AND BIRTH OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

How the Princess Victoria came to be Heiress Presumptive to the 
Throne — Death of the Princess Charlotte — Marriages of the 
Eoyal Dukes— Of the Duke of Kent— Birth of the Princess 
Alexandrina Victoria — Prediction of George IV. — Death of the 
Duke of Kent — His Character — His Liberal Opinions — Public 
Condolence with the "Widow and Orphan — Early Life of the 
Duchess of Kent. 

On the 6tli of November, 1817, the hopes of the nation, 
which had so fondly rested upon the happy union 
between the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold, were 
fatally blasted by Her Royal Highness's death, shortly 
after her delivery of a still-born child. Never in our* 
history was a blow felt more deeply and personally by 
all the nation, than this 'bereavement. The death of the 
Princess Charlotte severely and most painfully disap- 
pointed the nation in its general expectation with regard 
to the much desired succession to the throne in the 
person of herself and her heirs. The Duke of Cumber- 
land, who was hated by all, was the only married younger 
son of the king, and there was a general desire that the 
other royal princes, especially the popular and estimable 
Dukes of Kent and Sussex, should seek out suitable 
partners. The Duke of Kent rightlv felt that the 
House of Brunswick was dear to the English people, 
that the nation had a very strong desire that the 
question of succession should be placed beyond doubt, 



MAERIAGE OF THE DUKE OF KENT. 15 

and that, considering the uncertainty of the chances of 
life, and of leaving offspring, it was clearly his duty to 
marry. Indeed, he had already, ere the untimely death 
of his niece, offered his hand and heart to the widowed 
Princess of Leiningen. The Princess Charlotte tenderly 
loved her uncle Kent, who had done so much to promote 
the attainment of the wishes of her own heart, and she 
did all she could to promote the marriage of her uncle 
with the sister of her husband. But the position of the 
Princess of Leiningen as guardian of her two children 
occasioned delays ; and no unimportant matter was the 
fact that if she re-married, she would sacrifice a jointure 
of nearly .£5,000 a year, while the Duke of Kent was 
punished by the Court for his free and outspoken Liberal 
opinions by being restricted to a very meagre pecuniary 
allowance from the Tory Parliament. At last, how- 
ever, all minor difficulties were smoothed over. On the 
13th of May, a message was brought down to Parlia- 
ment, announcing that "the Prince Regent had given 
his consent to a marriage between the Duke of Kent 
and Her Serene Highness Mary Louisa Victoria^ daughter 
of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, widow of Enrich 
Charles, Prince of Leiningen, and sister of Prince 
Leopold." Of all the royal marriages, this was the one 
which the heart of the country went most thoroughly 
along with. The Duke of Kent never disguised — 
indeed, he openly proclaimed — his attachment to the 
principles of the popular party; and the fact of the 
close relationship of his intended wife to Prince Leopold 
was another strong recommendation. The marriage was 
celebrated, first according to the Lutheran rites in 
Germany, on the 29th May, 1818, and, on the 13th of 



16 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

July following, by tlie Archbisliop of Canterbury ; the 
Prince Kegent, on the latter occasion, giving away the 
bride. In the same summer, the Dukes of Clarence and 
Cambridge had married. The Duke of Sussex, whose 
affections and sympathies were otherwise engaged, de- 
clined to contract a foreign alliance ; but he took the 
liveliest interest in the marriage of his favourite brother 
Kent, as he also did in the future welfare and prosperity 
of his niece. 

After the English marriage, the young couple 
sojourned for a brief period at Claremont, the residence 
which had been selected by the Princess Charlotte, and 
which Prince Leopold continued to occupy. They then, 
guided chiefly by motives of economy, for their means 
were very small, travelled on the Continent, from which 
they returned for the accouchement of the Duchess. 
Both prospective parents were desirous that their child 
should be " born a Briton." They arrived at Dover on 
the 23rd of April, 1819, and on the 24th of May the 
Princess Alexandrina Victoria was born at Kensington 
Palace. She was born in the presence of the Dukes of 
Sussex and Wellington, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
the Marquis of Lansdowne, Earl Bathurst, Mr. Canning, 
Mr. Yansittart, and the Bishop of London. The Duke 
of Kent wept for joy, and the fact that his infant was a 
daughter did not in the least degree diminish his delight. 
The Duchess rapidly recovered, and the beauty and 
symmetry of the infant Princess were spoken of with 
admiration by all who had an opportunity of observing 
her. Shortly after this happy event, the Duke of Kent 
attended a drawing-room, from which, and similar Court 
ceremonies, the estrangement between himself and the 



CHRISTENING OF THE fEINCSSS VlCTOraA. 1? 

Kegent had for some time kept liim away. His brother 
■was most affable, and invited him to dine the next day, 
when he predicted that his little niece would be Queen 
Bome time. This certainly seemed improbable shortly after- 
wards, for Clarence, who was nearer in succession than 
Kent, became the father of two daughters by his wife, 
Adelaide. But they both died young, thereby opening 
the succession to the child of the Duke of Kent, and 
verifying the Kegent's prophecy. The child was chris- 
tened with great privacy, on the 24th of June, in the 
Palace of Kensington. The royal gold font was fetched 
from the Tower, and fitted up in the grand saloon of the 
palace. Under the direction of the Lord Chamberlain, 
the draperies were removed from the Chapel Royal, St. 
James's. The Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the 
Bishop of London, administered the holy office; the 
Prince Kegent, the members of the Koyal Family, and 
other illustrious visitors were present. The sponsors 
were the Prince Begent, the Czar Alexander (represented 
by the Duke of York as proxy), the Queen Dowager of 
"Wurtemberg (represented by the Princess Augusta), and 
the Duchess Dowager of Coburg (represented by the 
Duchess of Gloucester). A brilliant evening party filled 
the saloons of the happy parents. 

The Duke and Duchess still made Claremont their 
chief home. But the winter of 1819-20 set in with 
unusual severity, and they went to Sidmouth, in the 
hope of escaping its trying severity. Prom Sidmouth 
the Duke made an excursion to visit Salisbury Cathedral, 
where he caught a slight cold. On his return to Sid- 
mouth it became alarming, and the Duchess sent off in 
baste to her brother, who was visiting at Lord Craven's, 



18 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

'Soon after his arrival, tlie Duke breathed his last. While 
I his cold still slightly affected him, he had gone for a long 
walk, on the 13th of January, with Captain Conroy, and 
had his boots soaked through with wet. He neglected 
to change his boots and stockings until he dressed for 
dinner, being attracted by the smiles of his infant princess, 
with whom he sat for some time playing. Before night 
he had a sensation of cold and hoarseness, but the doctors 
were not alarmed, and merely prescribed mild medica- 
ments and a good night's rest. But the symptoms of 
fever rapidly increased, and, in spite of much blood- 
letting, he died ten days from the date of the recurrence 
of his cold. He met his death with pious resignation. 
The Duchess was most indefatigable in her attentions, and 
personally performed all the offices of the sick-bed. For 
five successive nights she never took off her clothes, and 
she struggled to prevent his seeing the agony of her 
apprehensions, never leaving the bed-side but to give 
vent to her bursting sorrow. The presence of her brother 
was a great comfort to her, both before and after the 
moment of death. It was fortunate, indeed, that Leopold 
was in this country, "as the poor Duke had left his family 
deprived of all means of existence." So did Leopold 
himself testify many years afterwards. 

The Duke of Kent, although unpopular in his youth 
on account of his strictness as a military disciplinarian, 
became in later days much beloved. His stature was tall, 
and his appearance noble and manly. His manner was 
engaging, and his conversation animated. He possessed 
an exact memory, varied information, a quick and 
masculine intellect. In many of his tastes and habits 
he closely resembled his father. He was an early riser, 



THE DUKE OF KENT. 19 

and a close economist of time ; temperate in eating ; 
thongh fond of society, indifferent to wine; a kind 
master, punctual correspondent, and exact man of busi- 
ness ; a steady friend, and an affectionate brother. He 
was peculiarly exempt in his youth from those extrava- 
gances and vices with which the names of some of his 
brothers were so painfully associated. He was in his 
early life, which he spent in active and laborious military 
service, a pattern of prudence, economy, and industrious 
habits. He incurred no unnecessary expenses, and made 
few debts, although his annual allowance was only £1,000 
for some years after he had attained his majority. He 
delighted in books, education, charity, and the pro- 
motion of all useful arts, and was a model son, husband, 
and father. He was a staunch and uncompromising 
advocate of those liberal opinions which it is so well 
known that his daughter inherits, which she displayed so 
unreservedly early in her reign, but the prominent ex- 
pression of which prudence and constitutional restraints 
convinced her that it was advisable to keep in the 
background, as her mind grew and ripened. The Duke 
of Kent's political views will be gathered from the fol- 
lowing extract from a speech at a banquet, in which he 
replied to the toast of the junior members of the Royal 
Family : — " I am a friend of civil and religious liberty, 
all the world over. I am an enemy to all religious tests. 
I am a supporter of a general system of education. All 
men are my brethren ; and I hold that power is only 
delegated for the benefit of the people. Those are the 
principles of myself and of my beloved brother, the Duke 
of Sussex. They are not popular principles just now ; 
that is, they do not conduct to place or office. All the 

c 2 



20 i^lFE OF qVMiS VlCTOElA. 

members of the Eoyal Family do not hold ilie same 
principles. For this I do not blame them; but we ^ 
claim for ourselves the right of thinking and acting as 
we think best, and we proclaim ourselves, with our 
friend Mr. Tierney, < members of His Majesty's loyal 
Opposition.' " These words give a precise and definite 
idea of the character of this clear-headed, good-hearted, 
shrewd, practical, and unpretending man. 

Prince Leopold accompanied his widowed sister and 
the little orphan from Sidmouth to Kensington Palace. 
The weather was most severe, and the journey a trying 
one. The Houses of Parliament remembered^ with 
respectful solicitude, the widowed and isolated state of 
the Duchess. Both Houses voted addresses of con- 
dolence. That from the Commons was presented by. 
Lords Morpeth and Clive. She appeared in person, 
though unable to suppress her grief, with the infant 
Victoria in her arms, to receive the deputation. She 
presented the babe to the deputed Members, and pointed 
to her as the treasure to whose preservation and im- 
provement she was resolved to dedicate her best energies 
and fondest love. The interview was exceedingly touch- 
ing. A true woman, the Duchess could not conceal the 
intensity of her widowed grief; but that did not over- 
shadow her maternal affection, and she recognised and 
spoke courageously of her duties, her responsibilities, and 
her high resolves. Public feeling and national anxiety 
accompanied her into her domestic privacy, and all 
classes of society took the deepest interest in all her 
movements. 

The Queen, indeed, owes much to her mother, who 
lived long enough to see her daughter's grandchildren. 



THE DUCHESS OF KENT. 21 

The Ducliess of Kent had been brought up under the 
immediate care and superintendence of her illustrious 
mother, whose character we have already described. She 
had shared the youthful lessons of her brother Leopold — 
a source, doubtless of great intellectual profit. In 1802, 
when she was but sixteen, much against her own wish, 
and only in compliance with the entreaties of her beloved 
father — who wished to see his only surviving daughter 
married, in such troublesome times, ere the end of his 
precarious and sickly life came — she became the wife of 
the Prince of Leiningen, a man eight- and-t wen ty years 
her senior. The union was most inappropriate and 
unwise. Her husband was repugnant in person and 
manners. He failed either to secure her confidence or 
contribute to her happiness. Yet she fulfilled her duties 
as a wife and mother in so exemplary a manner, from 
her marriage to her husband's death, in 1814, that the 
breath of slander never sullied her fair fame. Indeed, 
by the purity of her life, the manner in which she 
discharged her maternal duties, and the graceful suavity 
of her manners, she did much to ennoble the character of 
the House of Leiningen, which her husband had done 
much to lower. Her marriage with the Duke of Kent 
was one of unmistakable affection, and was a very 
happy one. Their tastes were similar ; biit her meekness 
and tact had a beneficial influence in mitigating a certain 
stern and abrupt brusqueness which he partly inherited 
from his father, and partly derived from the camps and 
garrison towns in which his youth was spent. The 
simplicity and tender unaffectedness of her manners — a 
peculiarity distinctive of the highest class of well-bred 
Qerm^n women — md her fascinating combinatioa of 



22 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

gentleness witli gaiety, not only won and bound, by 
daily increasing ties, the affections of her husband, 
but of all those who had the good fortune to become 
personally acquainted with her admirable life and dis- 
position. 



CHAPTER IVe 

FIRST YEARS OP CHILDHOOD. 

Old Memories of Kensington Palace — Enlargements of the Structure by 
William III., Anne, Queen Caroline, and the Duke of Sussex- 
Maids of Honour — Rank and Beauty in the Gardens — Wilber- 
force and the Infant Princess — Victoria at Ramsgate — A Picture 
of Victoria when Five Years old — Her Physical Training — Popu- 
larity as a Child — Her Youthful Charities— A Narrow Escape 
from Death — Early Development of Quick Intelligence — Anecdotes 
— Love of Nature — Proneness to Self-will— But Counterbalanced 
by Candour — ^Waggishness — A Portrait of the Child-Princess by 
Leigh Hunt. 

The infancy, girlhood, and budding womanhood of the 
Princess Victoria were chiefly spent at the Royal Palace 
of Kensington. It was her mother's fixed residence, 
but the family were much at Claremont, where the 
Queen testifies that she spent the happiest days of her 
childhood. There were frequent trips made, too, to 
yarious watering-places; and, as the Princess grew in 
years, visits were paid at the country houses of some 
of the nobility. Leigh Hunt, in his exquisite book of 
gossip entitled " The Old Court Suburb," thus happily 
describes the more salient and prominent features of the 
somewhat sombre region of the Queen's up-bringing : — 

In vain we are told that Wren is supposed to [have built the south 
front, and Kent (a man famous in his time) the east front. We can 
no more get up any enthusiasm about it as a building, than if it were 
a box or a piece of cheese. But it possesses a Dutch solidity ; it can 



24 IJFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

be imagined full of English comfort ; it is quiet ; in a good air ; and, 
though it is a palace, no tragical history is connected with it : all 
which considerations give it a sort of homely, fireside character, which 
seems to represent the domestic side of royalty itself, and thus renders 
an interesting service to what is not always so well recommended by 
cost and splendour. Windsor Castle is a place to receive monarchs 
in ; Buckingham Palace to see fashion in ; Kensington Palace seems a 
place to drink tea in : and this is by no means a state of things in 
which the idea of royalty comes least home to the good wishes of its 
subjects. The reigns that flourished here, appositely enough to this 
notion of the building, were all tea-drinking reigns — at least on the 
part of the ladies ; and if the present Queen does not reign there, she 
was born and bred there, growing up quietly under the care of a 
domestic mother ; during which time, the pedestrian, as he now goes 
quietly along the gardens, fancies no harsher sound to have been 
heard from the Palace windows than the " tuning of the tea-things," 
or the sound of a pianoforte. 

The associations of Kensington Palace are almost 
entirely with the earlier Hanoverian reigns ; the later 
Georges neglected it. E-umour hath it that this royal 
domain originated in the establishment of a nursery for 
fche children of Henry YIII. If it were so, Elizabeth 
and Victoria must have been brought up on the same 
spot ; but the tradition is not well supported. Its first 
ascertained proprietor was Heneage Finch, Speaker of 
the House of Commons at the accession of the First 
Charles, who built and occupied only a' small nucleus 
of the present structure, which was enlarged from 
time to time by most of its successive occupants, but 
with no pretension, and without much plan. From 
the second Earl of Nottingham, the grandson of Einch, 
William III. bought the house and grounds. The 
latter he enlarged to the extent of twenty-six acres. 
To these Anne added thirty, and to these in turn 
Queen Caroline^ ^ife of George II. ^ added tjiree Jmndre(J, 



KENSINGTON PALACE. 25 

Tlie house had been the while proiDortionately growing. 
Its last expansion was contributed by the Duke of 
Sussex. 

The gardens were pedantically squared to Dutch 
uniformity by William of Orange, and the semblance 
of a Court which he held in this Palace was corre- 
spondingly gloomy and dismal. The most singular 
visitor ever received by William was the Czar Peter, 
who drove hither incognito in a hackney coach, on his 
arrival in London, and was afterwards entertained here 
with some slight show of state. In Anne's time, the 
palace and gardens were little livelier than in William's. 
The Queen hedged herself in behind absurd chevaux- 
de-frise of etiquette, and the court chroniclers of the 
period record little else than eating and drinking. Swift 
and Prior, Bolingbroke and Marlborough, Addison and 
Steele, nevertheless, lent occasional gleams of brightness 
and dignity to the otherwise sombre scene. 

The most fascinating and memorable association of 
Kensington Palace is in connection with the Courts of 
the first two Georges, and of the son of the latter, 
Frederick Prince of Wales. These associations are 
specially connected with the bevies of frolicsome, and 
sometimes frail, maids of honour, who now live in the 
pages of Pope and Gay, of Hervey and Walpole. Chief 
among them was the gay, sprightly, and irresistible 
Molly Leppell, who resisted, in a manner equally indig- 
nant and comical, the degrading overtures of the coarse- 
souled George II. She married Hervey, the most 
effeminate and egregious dandy of his time. Chester- 
field thus toasted her in a ballad on the beauties of th§ 
Court ;-^ 



26 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

Oh ! if I had Bremen and Varden, 

And likewise the Duchy of Zell, 
I'd part with them all for a farden, 

To have my dear Molly Leppell. 

Caroline of Anspacli, consort of Frederick, Prince of 
Wales, introduced the habit of promenading in gorgeous 
costume in the gardens, first on Saturday, then on Sun- 
day, afternoons. By degrees the quality were admitted 
as well as the royal family and their immediate at- 
tendants. The liberty was gradually extended to the 
general public. Hence it was that Kensington Gardens 
became in time as open to all comers as are the royal 
parks. These gorgeous promenades ceased with the com- 
mencement of the last malady of George III. It was in 
allusion to the stately train of attendant beauties who 
accompanied the Princess Caroline of Wales, that Tickell 
wrote — 

Each walk, with rohes of various dyes bespread. 

Seems from afar a moving tulip bed, 

Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow, 

And chintz, .the rival of the showery bow. 

Here England's Daughter, darling of the land, 

Sometimes, surrounded with her virgin band, 

Gleams through the shades. She, towering o'er the rest, 

Stands fairest of the fairer kind confess'd ; 

Form'd to gain hearts that Brunswick's cause denied. 

And charm a people to her father's side. 

With the death of George II., the glory departed 
from Kensington. No future English King favoured or 
frequented it. George III. never resided in the Palace, 
and it was altogether too dull and homely for his eldest 
son. He was willing enough that his bookish brother 
Sussex, and his steady brother Kent, should abide in it ; 



WILBERFORCE AND THE PRINCESS. 27 

and, as one writer puts it, depicting the "first gentle- 
man in Europe" in a light far from pleasing, but for 
the use of which we fear there was too much foundation 
— " He was well content to think that the staid-looking 
house and formal gardens rendered the spot a good 
out-of-the-way sort of place enough, for obscuring the 
growth and breeding of his niece and probable heiress, 
the Princess Victoria, whose life, under the guidance 
of a wise mother, promised to furnish so estimable a 
contrast to his own." 

It was in the rooms, rich with such varied asso- 
ciations as those, some few of which we have cited, and 
surrounded by the remarkable collection of pictures, 
chiefly by Byzantine and early German painters — ^that 
England's future Queen grew up from babyhood to 
womanhood. Amongst the very earliest notices of the 
infant Princess is the following, which we cite from a 
letter written by Wilberforce to his friend, Hannah 
More, on the 21st July, 1820. He says : — 

In consequence of a very civil message from the Duchess of Kent, 
I waited on her this morning. She received me with her fine animated 
child on the floor by her side, with its playthings, of which I soon 
became one. She was very civil ; but, as she did not sit down, I did 
not think it right to stay above a quarter of an hour ; and there being 
but a female attendant and footman present, I could not well get up 
any topic, so as to carry on a continued discourse. She apologised 
for not speaking English well enough to talk it ; but intimated a hope 
that she might talk it better and longer with me at some future time. 
She spoke of her situation [this was, probably, in reference to the 
cold treatment of her and hers by George IV.], and her manner was 
quite delightful. 

Four years later, the Duchess and the little Princess 
paid one of many visits to Eamsgate : and it would 



28 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

appear tliat the Duchess of Kent had already succeeded 
in being able to talk English " better and longer " with 
Wilberforce "at some future time ;" for an eye-witness, 
who was familiar with all the group, witnessed the fol- 
lowing scene. It was a fine summer day : too warm 
anywhere but on the shore of the sea, the breeze from 
which sufficiently moderated the temperature. A little 
girl, with a fair, light form, was sporting on the sands in 
all the redolence of youth and health. Her dress was 
simple — plain straw bonnet, with a white riband round 
the crown, a coloured muslin frock, and " as pretty a pair 
of shoes, on as pretty a pair of feet, as I ever remember 
to have seen from China to Kamschatka" — so testifies 
the authority from whom we quote. The child had two 
companions — her mother and William "Wilberforce. The 
latter looked as lovingly on the child as did her mother. 
His kindly eye followed with tender interest her every 
footstep, and he was evidently meditating on the great 
destiny which was in store for her, when her mother, 
less meditative, more concerned with the afiairs of the 
present, suddenly observed that her daughter had got her 
shoes wetted by a breaker. She waved her hand, and 
Victoria, obedient to the signal, at once rejoined her 
mother and her friend. Perhaps another motive might 
have been at work in the mother's breast; for imme- 
diately the child had joined the elders, Wilberforce took 
her hand in both of his, and addressed to her some 
kindly words, doubtless of excellent counsel, for the blue 
eyes of the girl looked fixedly at her venerable in- 
structor, and the devoted mother glanced from one to 
fihe other, evidently interested and affected by the con- 
trast, Wilberforce was T\q ^earjsome r^str^in^y gf th# 



Moral teainihg. 20 

buoyancy of youth; a few minutes later, lie and his 
young companion were standing at the margin of the 
tide, watching the encroachments of each new breaker, 
and the dexterity with which a pet Newfoundland dog 
brought bits of stick out of the waves. 

During the earliest years of her childhood, Victoria 
does not seem to have been harassed with book-learning 
— a most wise and excellent omission. In 1823, the 
Dowager Duchess of Coburg wrote to her daughter — 
" Do not yet tease your little puss with learning ; she 
is so young still." The Queen's mother followed the 
good advice ; it was the cultivation of the heart of 
her child at which she first strove. Above everything, 
any approach to pride or hauteur was discouraged. 
The convictions equally with the natural temperament 
of the Duchess, led her to regard such a quality 
as specially to be avoided. She was trained to be 
courteous, affable, lively, and to put social inferiors 
perfectly at their ease. In her juvenile sea-side and 
other excursions, it was constantly observed by every 
one that the faces of the bathing-women, and others 
of the same class, whose services were needed, lighted 
up with genuine, unaffected gladness whenever the 
young Princess appeared. The following little picture 
deserves to be reproduced, without tampering with the 
colours of its portrayer : — " As she proceeded up the 
High Street from the sands, there sat on the low step of 
a closed shop an aged Irishwoman, pale, wan, dejected, 
sorrowful, her head bent . forward, and whilst all nature 
was gay, she looked sickly, sad, and famishing. Whether 
she was too depressed to beg, or too exhausted at that 
moment to make the effort, I cannot tell, but she asked 



30 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

for no alms, and even looked not at tlie passers-by. The 
young Princess was attracted by her appearance, and 
spoke to the Duchess : * I think not,' were the only words 
I heard from her mamma ; and, ' Oh, yes, indeed ! ' was 
all I could catch of the youthful reply. I have no doubt 
the Duchess thought the old woman was not in need of 
relief, or would be oftended by the offer of alms-; but the 
Princess had looked under her bt/nnet, and gained a 
better insight into her condition. There was a momentary 
pause ; the Princess ran back a few steps most nimbly, 
and with a smile of heartfelt delight placed some silver 
in the hands of the old Irishwoman. Tall and stately 
was the poor creature, and as she rose slowly with clasped 
hands and riveted features, she implored the blessing of 
Heaven on the * English lady.' She was so taken by 
surprise by this unexpected mark of beneficence on the 
part of she knew not whom, that she turned over her 
sixpences again and again, thanked the Virgin, as well as 
the ' young lady,' a thousand times, and related to those 
who stopped to hear her exclamations, the ' good luck ' 
that had come upon her." 

While still not a year old, and ere her father's death, 
the intensity of interest which the people took in the 
safety and welfare of the Princess had been strongly dis- 
played in the universal satisfaction which was expressed 
at her providential escape from being wounded, if not 
killed, in consequence of some boys shooting at birds near 
the temporary residence of the Duke at Sidmouth. 
Some of the shots penetrated the window of the nursery, 
and passed very near the child's head. This universal 
interest became yet deeper, when, after the lapse of two 
or three years, both of the daughters of the Duke of 



THE queen's childhood. 31 

(Slarence having died, and there being no probability of 
any issue in the line of either the Dukes of York or 
Clarence, she became the eventual successor to the throne, 
in the event of the deaths of these two elder brothers of 
her father. It was now learned with delight that she 
passed through the ordins^ry maladies of childhood 
favourably, and that her recovery from them was speedy. 
The public had ample opportunities afforded them of 
observing her growing and healthful strength; and all 
commented with pleasure upon the circumstance that she 
was not kept secluded from the view and observation of 
the people, that her rides and walks were generally in 
public, that she was growing up towards maturity in the 
sight of the nation, and as the child of the country. It 
was further a matter of great general rejoicing that those 
who were selected, even from the earliest period, to 
surround her person were of the most irreproachable 
character, and that moral worth was sought for in her 
preceptors even more than brilliant attainments. 

It is especially worthy of notice that the Duke and 
Duchess of Clarence, their hearts not being made in the 
slightest degree callous or soured by their own melancholy 
bereavements and the disappointment of their fondest 
hopes, formed and displayed for their niece a sincere and 
warm attachment. They took from the very first the 
warmest interest in all her vicissitudes and illnesses; 
and when they became King and Queen their elevated 
positions only seemed to increase the warmth of their 
regard, and the copious flow of their practical kindness. 
It was, therefore, no wonder that when, under Providence, 
Victoria became Queen she treated the Queen Dowager 
with most unequivocal respect and esteem, regarding 



32 LIFE OF QUEEN VlCtTORIA. 

her suggestions with deference, and her wishes with 
loving compliance. 

Spite of many sinister rumours, the Princess grew 
up strong and vigorous. Her mother was especially careful 
to fortify her constitution, and so to prepare it to en- 
counter the hard work and manifold anxiety which are 
the inevitable lot of a British sovereign. Many there 
were — some of them with ends of their own to gain — 
who kept prophesying that " the daughter of the Duke 
of Kent would never attain her legal majority;" or, that 
" she would never marry ; " again, that *' she could never 
become the mother of a family." Much alarm was caused 
by these prognostications. For one thing was above all 
others ardently desired by the nation — that the Duke 
of Cumberland, who stood next in succession after the 
Princess, should never become King of England. Even 
if he had not been an object of something more than 
suspicion, it was universally desired that England should 
never again (after King William's death) be united with 
Hanover under one monarch. But as facts became 
known by degrees about the Princess, as her healthy face 
and agile frame became familiar in London, and in many 
parts of the land, the apprehensions died away, and the 
"frail, delicate, sickly child," whose fabricated ailments 
had been made the subject of so much sham sympathy, 
was looked upon as a fabulous invention. 

It soon became known that her physical and mental 
characteristics were of a nature directly the opposite of 
what had been so industriously reported. She was 
extremely active, and had a healthy love of sports and 
games. She had an inquiring mind, not only restless 
in the pursuit, but clear in the comprehension of 



LEARNING TO EE.U5. 33 

knowledge. She soon developed, too, mucli decision of 
cliaracter. Seemingly incapable of fatigue, she was the 
first to begin, and the last to leave off, a study, a 
romp, a game, a new duty, and equally eager to resume 
an old occupation. ThL? peculiarity, it was gladly 
observed, was an inheritance from her father ; but 
her mother also set her a congenial example of industry 
and perseverance. Such stories as the following were 
gleefully passed throughout the land from lip to lip. 
While she was learning her alphabet, she, doubtful of 
the utility of being so tormented, ejaculated — "What 
good this ? — what good this ? " She was told that 
"mamma could know all that was contained in the 
great book on the table because she knew her letters, 
whilst the little daughter could not." This was quite 
enough, and the young acolyte of the alphabet cried 
out, " I learn, too — I learn, too — very quick." And she 
did become rapidly mistress of her letters. Her mother 
sought to teach her to be satisfied with simple pleasures, 
and here she was a most apt pupil. Once, when she 
was so young that she could not express what she felt, 
she drac^ged her uncle Clarence to the window to observe 
a beautiful sunset. To her uncle Leopold, too, she was 
constantly pointing out objects of natural beauty, on 
which he invariably improved the opportunity by giving 
i her prompt and clear explanations of the phenomena 
i which evoked her admiration. Her engrossing passion, 
indeed — as was that of her future husband — was for 
cabinets of natural history, menageries, museums, &c. 
For pictures she had an equal love, and one of the 
I first acquirements in which she became proficient was 
sketching from nature. 



34 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

Perhaps the greatest danger she incurred, and the 
one which her mother had to take the greatest pains to 
avert, was the likelihood that her independent decision 
of character, which she derived from the Hanoverian 
half of her ancestry, might degenerate into stubbornness 
and self-will. But her natural sense of justice, and ready 
openness to clear conviction, proved an admirable counter- 
poise. With peculiar ingenuousness of character, she 
unreservedly admitted an error the very instant she 
perceived it. Once, for example, when on a visit to 
Earl Fitzwilliam, a bosom friend of her father, the 
party were walking in the grounds, and she had run 
on in advance. An under-gardener cautioned her not 
to go down a certain walk, as, said he, in his provincial 
dialect, the rain had made the ground " slape." " Slape ! 
slape ! " cried she, rapidly, and in the true George III. 
style ; " and pray, what is ' slape ? '" " Very slipjDcry, 
miss — your Eoyal Highness — ma'am," replied he. " Oh ! 
that's all," she replied ; " thank you," and at once pro- 
ceeded. She had not advanced many yards, when she 
came down heavily to the ground. The Earl had 
been observing all that had passed, from a few 
yards' distance, and he cried out, " There ! now your 
Eoyal Highness has an explanation of the term ' slape,' 
both theoretically and practically." "Yes, my lord," 
she somewhat meekly said, "I think I have. I shall 
never forget the word 'slape.'" On a similar occasion, 
when cautioned not to frolic with a dog whose temper 
was not very reliable, she persisted in doing so, and he 
made a snap at her hand. Her cautioner ran solici- 
tously, believing that she had been bitten. " Oh, thank | 
you! thank you!" said she. "You're right, and I ami 

I 



JUVE.S-ILE AKECDOTES. 35 

wrong ; but he didn't bite me — lie only warned me. I 
shall be careful in future." 

The following incident shows that at least on some 
occasions a keen spirit of waggishness entered strongly 
into her self-will. When first she took lessons on the 
piano, she objected strongly to the monotonous fingering, 
as she had formerly done to A B C. She was, of 
course, informed that all success as a musician depended 
upon her first becoming " mistress of the piano." 

"Oh, I am to be mistress of my piano, am I ?" asked 
she. To that the reply was a repetition of the state- 
ment. 

"Then what would you think of me if I became 
mistress at once ?" 

"That would be impossible. There is no royal 
road to music. Experience and great practice are 
essential." 

" Oh, there is no royal road to music, eh ? No royal 
road ? And I am not mistress of my pianoforte ? But 
I will be, I assure you ; and the royal road is this " — at 
the same time closing the piano, locking it, and taking 
the key — "There! that's being mistress of the piano! 
and the royal road to learning is, never to take a lesson 
till you're in the humour to do it." 

After the laugh which her joke had provoked in 
herself and others had subsided, she at once volunteered 
to resume the lesson. 

We cannot more fitly conclude this chapter, ere we 
proceed to travel an important stage further in our 
attempt to trace the youthful days of the Queen, than 
by presenting a picture of her, as she appeared at this 
period of her life to the genial eyes of Leigh Hunt, 

j> 2 



36 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

to whom we liave been already indebted at the com- 
mencement ot this chapter : — 

We rememlaer well the peculiar kind of personal pleasure wliich it 
gave us to see the future Queen, the first time we ever did see her, 
coming up a cross path from the Bayswater Gate, with a girl of her 
own age by her side, whose hand she was holding, as if she loved her. 
It brought to our mind the warmth of our own juvenile friendships, 
and made us fancy that she loved everything else that we had loved in 
like measure — books, trees, verses, Arabian tales, and the good mother 
who had helped to make her so affectionate. A magnificent footman, 
in scarlet, came behind her, with the splendidest pair of calves, in 
white stockings, that we had ever beheld. He looked somehow like 
a gigantic fairy, personating, for his little lady's sake, the grandest 
footman he could think of ; and his calves he seemed to have made 
cut of a couple of the biggest chaise-lamps in the possession of the 
godmother of Cinderella. As the Princess grew up, the world seemed 
never to hear of her except as it wished to hear — that is to say, in 
connection with her mother; and now it never hears of her but in 
connection with children of her own, and her husband, and her mother 
still [this was written in 1855], and all good household pleasures and 
hospitalities, and public virtues of a piece with them. May life ever 
continue to appear to her what, indeed, it really is to all who have 
eyes for seeing beyond the surface — namely, a wondrous fairy scene, 
strange, beautiful, mournful too, yet hopeful of being "happy ever 
after," when its story is over ; and wise, meantime, in seeing much 
where others see nothing, in shedding its tears patiently, and in doing 
its best to diminish the tears around it. 



CHAPTEK Y. 

EDUCATION OF THE PRINCESS VICTORIA. 

Additional Grant by Parliament for the Maintenance and Education 
of the Princess — Wise Lessons learned at her Mother's Knees — 
A Visit to George IV. at Windsor — Assiduous Pursuit of Know- 
ledge — Accession of William IV. — Victoria becomes next iu 
succession to the Crown — Kegency Bill — Satisfaction of the good 
Grandmother at Coburg — Her Death — Joy of Victoria at the 
Elevation of her Uncle to ,the' Belgian Throne — Parliamentary 
Inquiry into the Progress of her Education — Satisfactory Report 
in Response — Presented at Court — Great Ball on her Twelfth 
Birthday at St. James's Palace — Court Scandal and Baseless 
Rumours — The Duchess of Northumberland appointed Governess 
' — The Princess and the Poet Southey. 

The time had now arrived when, in the opinion, not 
only of the private friends of the Duchess of Kent, but 
of the Ministers of the Crown, it was held that a 
more liberal provision should be made for the increas- 
ing cost of the training of the Princess, than the very- 
moderate annual allowance which the Duchess of Kent 
had as yet received. This matter was formally brought 
before Parliament on the occasion of the Princess at- 
taining her sixth birthday. Up to this date, and for 
some little time subsequently to it. King George IV. 
seems to have hardly paid the slightest heed to his niece 
arid ultimate successor. On her fifth birthday. Prince 
Leopold, who throughout filled a true father's place, gave 
a ban(|uet in her honour; at which most of the niembeyg 



38 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORiii. 

of the English Eoyal Family, and the Prince Leiningen, 
son of the Duchess of Kent and half-brother of Yictoria, 
were present. On this occasion, the child was much 
admired for her frankness, quickness, and talent, but 
especially for her deep attachment to her mother. Her 
mother took occasion to impress upon her the con- 
sideration that such attentions as those which were then 
shown her were rendered in the hope that she would 
cultivate the qualities and graces which alone could 
make her a worthy and acceptable ruler of the British 
empire. "It is not you," said she, "but your future 
office and rank which are regarded by the country; 
and you must so act as never to bring that office and 
that rank into disgrace or disrespect." And when the 
Duchess took her child to see for the first time the 
statue which had just been erected at the top of Portland 
Place to her father's memory, she was careful to make 
her know and feel that " dear papa's likeness was placed 
there, not merely because he was a prince, but because 
he was a good man, was kind to the poor, caused little 
boys and girls to be taught to read and write, helped to 
get money from good people to cure the sick, the lame, 
the blind, the deaf, and did all he could to make bad 
people good." 

In May, 1825, the sixth birthday of the Princess 
arrived. It became desirable, not merely to extend the 
sphere of her knowledge, but to introduce her to society 
at unavoidable expense; and, when she appeared in 
public and took trips in the country, to surround her ' 
with some of the splendour which properly belonged to 
her position. Accordingly, Lord Liverpool, the Premier, 
presented a Message from the King, requesting that some 



GEORGE IV. AND THE PHINCESS VICTORIA. 39 

provision should be made for the Princess. His lordship 
spoke in the highest terms of the Duchess of Kent; 
eulogised her for having supported and educated her 
daughter without making any application to Parliament ; 
and demonstrated, that her education must, from that 
date, be much more wide and costly. He proposed an 
additional grant of £6,000 per annum to the Duchess, 
to continue throughout the minority of her daughter. 
The House of Lords cordially acquiesced in the proposal. 
In the Lower House, Mr. Brougham, although uniting 
mother and daughter in one common eulogy, objected to 
the amount proposed. Mr. Hume supported him, sug- 
gesting an annuity increasing from year to year ; but, on 
a division, the original proposal was carried by a majority 
of fifty. 

Only after this formal act of national recognition does 
it appear that the King deigned to turn his personal 
attention in the direction of his niece. The year after, we 
find the Duchess of Coburg writing to her daughter, and 
referring to the fact that she had seen by the English 
papers, that "His Majesty, Her Eoyal Highness the 
Duchess of Kent, and the Princess Victoria, went on 
[Virginia Water." "The little monkey," she writes, 
j"must have pleased him. She is such a pretty,' clever 
'child." It was reported at the time that the Kiug, on 
;the occasion of this visit to Windsor, shared the general 
jdelight at the intelligence and sprighthness of liis 
charming little niece. He caused her to dine in state 
with him, and when he asked her what tune she would 
like the band to play during dinner, she courteously and 
aaively replied, " God save the King." 

The years interveuing until 1830 were passed in 



40 AIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

almost complete quietude and seclusion by the Princess ; 
her education being now most assidu )usly pursued. 

The year 1830 made an important difference in the 
position of the Princess. By the death of George lY., 
the Duke of Clarence became King, and — the Duke of 
York having died in 1827 — she now stood next in direct 
succession to the throne. In the last month of the year 
a E/Cgency Bill was passed, of which these were the chief 
provisions : — In the event of Queen Adelaide bearing a 
posthumous child. Her Majesty should be guardian and 
Kegent during the minority. If that event should not 
occur, the Duchess of Kent was to be guardian and 
Begent during the minority of her daughter, the Princess 
Yictoria, the heiress-presumptive. That Princess should 
not marry while a minor, without the consent of the 
King ; or, if he died, without the consent of both Houses. 
When the Eeport of the Begency Bill was brought up, 
Lord Lyndhurst moved and carried a clause to the efiect 
that in case the Duchess of Kent should marry a foreigner 
in the lifetime of His Majesty, but without his consent, 
she should, by that act, forfeit all pretensions to the 
Begency. 

The Duke of Buckingham, in his "Courts and 
Cabinets of William lY. and Yictoria," thus remarked 
on this proviso : — 

The position of the Princess attracted towards her Royal Highness 
the solicitude and sympathy of all classes of the people. A proper 
consideration of her chance of succeeding to the throne showed that 
there was much at stake, and the bitter disappointment caused by the 
untimely fate of the last female heiress presumptive, gave deeper 
feeling to the interest with which she was regarded. It was desirable 
that her youth should be, as much as possible, watched over to protect 
it from all evil contingencies, and though there could not be a better 



THE queen's GKANDMOTHER. 41 

guardian for tlie Princess than the one nature had provided her with, 
the anxiety of a nation demanded precautions that, under other circum- 
stances, would have been considered totally unnecessary. We can now 
1861) afford to smile on the jealous affection with which Her Eoyal 
Highness was fenced round thirty years ago. 

The satisfactory settlement of the Kegency question 
gave great satisfaction to the good grandmother at 
Coburg. She wrote to her daughter, on receipt of the 
news — 

I should have been sorry if the Regency had been given into other 
hands than yours. It would not have been a just return for your 
constant devotion and care to your child, if this had not been done. 
May God give you wisdom and strength to do your duty, if called 
upon to undertake it. May God bless and protect my little darling ! — 
If I could but once see her again ! The print you have sent to me is 
not like the dear picture I have ; the quantity of curls hide the well- 
shaped head, and make it look too large for the lovely little figure. 

It was not fated that the Duchess of Coburg should ever 
see her granddaughter again ; she died within a twelve- 
month of writing the above. Her latest letters to her 
daughter were characterised by a peculiar warmth of 
affection for the Princess. "Writing in the summer of 
1830, on the occasion of Victoria's birthday, she said — 

My blessings and good wishes for the day which gave you the sweet 
Blossom of May ! May God preserve and protect the valuable life of 
that lovely flower from all the dangers that will beset her mind and 
heart ! 

And when the news of the death o± George TV. reached 
her, she wrote — 

God bless Old England, where my beloved children live, and where 
the sweet Blossom of May may one day reign ! May God yet for 
many years keep the weight of a crown from her young head, and let 
the intelligent, clever child grow up to girlhood, before this dangerous; 
grandeur devolves u^oij her ! 



42 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

Eugland owes a deep debt of gratitude to this 
excellent and intelligent woman, for to her we are 
indebted for that training of her daughter, which fitted 
that daughter to train in turn, for us and for our 
advantage, Queen Victoria. 

An event of considerable influence upon the well- 
being and happiness of the Queen we must not omit to 
chronicle, ere we pass onwards in the course of our 
narrative. Prince* Leopold had been designated by the 
great guaranteeing Powers as the ruler of the newly 
emancipated state of Greece. He was prepared to accept 
the position. This distressed his niece, who had 
been brought up under his kindly tutelage from her 
birth ; but circumstances which it does not concern our 
purpose to dwell upon, induced Leopold to break off the 
Greek negotiation. Shortly after, to the great delight 
of Yictoria, he was nominated by the Powers, and 
accepted by his future subjects, as King of the Belgians. 
This ensured his being constantly comparatively near to 
his niece. How frequent were his visits to England, 
as long as his life lasted, no resident in London needs 
to be informed ; up till within the last few years, his 
face was almost as familiar in the parks as those of 
the members of the Queen's own family. He often 
appeared in London suddenly, and without announce- 
ment, having been summoned, it was generally believed, 
on such occasions, to consult with the Queen on some 
point of imminent moment. Such summonses he always 
responded to with instant alacrity. 

In the year 1831, the public became anxious to know 
how the education of the heiress-presumptive to the 
throne progressed; what was the nature of her studies, 



ABSUKD EUMOUES. 43 

and ■wliicli she preferred and most diligently pnrsned. 
Prompt, responsive, and satisfactory statements ^v^ere 
rendered. It appeared that since the accession of King 
William, her tuition had been almost entirely entrusted 
to English teachers. Mr. Amos instructed her in the 
principles of the English Constitution, Mr. Westall in 
drawing ; she had made considerable progress in Latin, 
and could read Horace with fluency. It was further stated 
that her love of music was enthusiastic, -and that it was 
the orchestral rather than the dramatic attraction that 
caused her to frequent the theatres so much as she did. 
It was remarked that, on the occasion of the coronation 
of William lY., which took place on the 8th of Septem- 
ber, neither the Princess nor her mother were present. 
Their absence was explained by the announcement, that 
, the health of the Princess rendered a sojourn in the Isle 
I of Wight necessary. Prudent persons held that, even 
had it been otherwise, her tender years and peculiar 
position rendered her absence preferable to her presence. 
She was but twelve years old, and it was commonly 
! stated that only a year before had it been deemed wise 
fully to make her aware of the regal destiny which was 
before her. Gossip-mongers — a whole host of whom 
circulated the most absurd rumours about the Princess 
from her most tender years until long after she had 
become Queen — alleged that the real reason of her absence 
was the fact that her proper place in the ceremony was 
not assigned to her. The real truth we believe to have 
been as follows. Since the accession of her uncle 
Clarence, Victoria had been plunged into a round of 
gaiety which did not at all comport either with her 
years or a certain fragility of health, which now for a 



44 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

short time succeeded the fine animal power and spirits of 
the years preceding. She had been presented at the first 
drawing-room held by Queen Adelaide, the most magni- 
ficent that had been held since the presentation of 
Charlotte, Princess of Wales, on the occasion of her mar* 
riage. This was her first appearance in state. She arrived 
with her mother, attended by the Duchess of ISTorthumber- 
land, Lady Charlotte St. Maur, Lady Catherine Jenkinson, 
the Honourable Mrs. Cust, Lady Conroy, the Baroness 
Lehzen, Sir J. Conroy, and General Wetherall. Her dress 
was made entirely of articles manufactured in Great 
Britain, and consisted of a simple, modest, and becoming 
blonde frock. She was the great object of interest 
present, stood on the left of the King, and contemplated 
the elite of her future subjects with a dignified amiability 
which charmed every one. On her twelfth birthday, in the 
same year, she was overwhelmed with presents ; amongst 
others, two beautiful ponies, presented by the Duchess of 
Gordon, which became especial pets. The Queen gave a 
juvenile ball in her honour, which Queen Victoria has often 
talked of in later times, as the scene which of all others 
made the deepest impression on her childish imagination. 
Spite of all this, and of the notorious and profuse kind- 
ness with which the King and Queen Adelaide had 
always treated her, many were found to believe that 
they were jealous of, and meant to slight her. The 
truth was, that the Duchess of Northumberland, who, 
at the suggestion of the King himself, had been ap- 
pointed to the high and important office of governess 
to the Princess, began to be alarmed at the consequences 
of so much festivity and excitement. She objected to 
her freqiient ^ttendauc^ sit drawing-rooms, ^nd 



THE PHINCESS AND SOUTHEY. 45 

recommended absence from the fatiguing coronation 
ceremony. 

The selection of this lady for the important office 
which she filled was a wise one, and the public 
judgment approved it. She possessed great personal 
attractions, mental 'powers of unusual range, and the 
highest rank. The appointment was by no means a 
nominal one, or one merely of state. Her visits to 
Kensington Palace were constant, and she frequently 
remained there all day. On one occasion, while her 
Grace was instructing her pupil, Southey called, and 
wa.s greeted by the Princess and the gouvernante very 
warmly. He conversed for some time with the ladies ; 
first on poetry, then on history. He afterwards used to 
state with pride, that the Princess told him that she 
read his prose and poetical compositions with equal 
delight. The "Life of Nelson" especially charmed her. 
" That," she said, " is a delightful .book indeed ; and I 
am sure I could read it half a dozen times' over." The 
gossip-mongers also alleged that the Duchess endeavoured 
to give a political bias to the education of the Princess. 
Some uneasiness was created at this. But when the 
matter was properly inquired into, it was ascertained 
that, neither in the selection of books to be studied, nor 
in the remarks made upon their text, was the slightest 
party colour given to the education of the royal pupil ot 
the Duchess. It was while under the care of this lady 
that the Princess acquired her well-known admirable 
horsemanship. To Fozard, the best riding-master of the 
day, was entrusted her tuition in riding. She soon 
became distinguished by the ease of her carriage, and 
her truly royal air and demeanour. This was a common 



46 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

subject of admiring remark by distinguislied foreigners ; 
amongst others, by Count OrlofF, to whom, in 1832, the 
Duchess of Kent gave a splendid banquet. The Princess, 
after she was removed from the active care of the 
Duchess of Northumberland, gave the best proof of 
her gratitude and sense of the services she had rendered 
her, by keeping up with her Grace a constant epistolary 
correspondence. Wherever she went, in the many tours 
through England which she made while passing through 
her teens, she wrote letters to the Duchess describing 
whatever interested and instructed her in what she saw. 
This correspondence was really a voluntary continuation 
of her education. 



CHAPTEK YI 

THE PRINCESS IN HER TEENS. 

Visits paid to many parts of England — Love of Cathedrals and Churcli 
Music — Trip to North Wales and the Midland Counties — Visit to 
a Cotton Mill — To Oxford— Gala Day at Southampton — Interview 
•with the Young Queen of Portugal — Confirmation of the Princess 
— Tour to the North — York Musical Festival — At Eamsgate ^vith 
the King of the Belgians — A Noble Deed at Tunbridge Wells. 

In the year subsequent to the coronation of King 
William, the Duchess of Kent and her daughter spent 
much time in making visits to various parts of England. 
We have already seen that they were in the Isle of 
Wight at the date of the coronation. The same year, 
they spent some time at Worthing, and visited Lord 
Liverpool and his daughters at Euxted Park, whence 
they proceeded to Malvern, where their liberal relief of 
distress caused them to be much beloved. While at 
Malvern, they visited the cathedral at Worcester. 
Cathedrals were especial favourites with the Princess, 
and Church music gratified her as much as ecclesiastical 
architecture. To the public institutions of the cathedral 
cities which she visited she was an invariable benefactress, 
T.nd willingly beggared herself of all her pocket-money 
that she might be the better able to meet the demands 
of art, science, literature, and poverty upon her benevo- 
lence. This year they also visited Hereford and Bath, and 
Vera magnificently entertained by the Earls Somers and 
Beauchamp, at Eastnor Castle and Maddresfield Court. 



48 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

In 1831, tliey sojonrned for a time at Claremont, in 
the Isle of Wiglit, and at Weymoutli. The next year 
chronicled a more extensive autumnal tour than any 
hitherto undertaken. To North Wales they repaired 
first. Having seen its romantic beauties, they reached 
the ancient city of Chester on the 17th of October 
and on entering the cathedral were respectfully received 
and courteously addressed by the Bishop. The Duchess 
of Kent thus replied to the welcome of the Prelate : — 
"I cannot better allude to your good feeling towards 
the Princess than by joining fervently in the wish that 
she may set an example in her conduct of that piety 
towards God, and charity towards man, which is the 
only sure foundation either of individual happiness or 
national prosperity." Prom Chester they proceeded to 
Eaton Hall, the palatial residence of the Grosvenors 
and thence to Chatsworth, the still more splendid abode 
of the Cavendish family. From Chatsworth they went 
to Belper, where they examined the cotton mills of the 
Messrs. Strutt, and were most cordially received by the 
numerous factory hands. Mr. James Strutt, by means 
of a model, explained to the Princess the several pro- 
cesses of cotton-spinning, which she listened to with 
keen attention and ready apprehension. The Queen 
retained a lively and fragrant recollection of this visit ; 
and, years after, she created the son of her cicerone 
a peer, by the title of Lord Belper. The week fol- 
lowing they visited Hardwicke Hall, Chesterfield, and 
Matlock. Thence they proceeded to Shugborough, the 
seat of the Earl of Lichfield. Their next honoured 
entertainer was the Earl of Shrewsbury, at Alton 
Towers. "While there, they visited LichfieW CVxtliedral 



AN AUTUMNAL TOUE. 49 

ftnd graciously received congratulatory addresses from 
fclie clergy and corporation. Their next stage was tlie 
seat of Lord Liverpool, who was one of the staunchest 
friends of the Duchess of Kent, of whom his daughter, 
Lady Catherine Jenkinson, was one of the Ladies-in- 
waiting. Proceeding homewards, they honoured with 
successive visits Earl Powis, the Hon. K. H. Clive, M.P., 
the Earls of Plymouth and Abingdon. From the 
seat of the latter they went to Oxford, which city they 
entered with an escort of yeomanry. The Yice- Chan- 
cellor presented an appropriate address in the Theatre, 
which was crowded with the celebrities of the University. 
The Duchess of Kent made the following answer : — 

We close a most interesting journey by a visit to this University, 
that the Princess may -see, as far as her years will allow, all that is 
interesting in it. The history of our country has taught her to know 
its importance by the many distinguished persons who, by their 
character and talents, have been raised to eminence by the education 
they have received in it. Your loyalty to the King, and recollection 
of the favour you have enjoyed under the paternal sway of his house, 
could not fail, I was sure, to lead you to, receive his niece with all the 
disposition you evince to make this visit agreeable and instructive to 
her. It is my object to insure, by all means in my power, her being 
so educated as to meet the just expectation of all classes ia this great 
and free country. 

Their Eoyal Highnesses returned to Kensington on the 
9th of November. 

In 1833, the rambles of mother and daughter did not 
extend beyond the south coast ; Portsmouth, Weymouth, 
and the Isle of Wight being the respective halting- 
places. While residing at Norris, East Cowes, they 
attended the ceremony of opening the new landing-pier 
at the fast rising port of Southampton. A steamer 



50 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

towed tlie Royal yacht from Cowes into b'outliampton. 
Water, wliere were waiting a deputation, representing tlie 
corporation of the town, in an eight- oared barge, with 
one of the town-sergeants standing with the silver oar 
in the leads. The deputation having stated the object of 
the day's ceremonial, the Duchess of Kent replied to the 
effect that she desired her daughter early to become 
attached to works of utility. They were then rowed 
ashore, amid the cheers of 25,000 spectators, and enter- 
tained at luncheon; subsequently, being requested to 
name the pier, the Duchess designated it the "Eoyal 
Pier." Countless festivities followed in the evening, and 
"the townspeople were almost as proud of the presence 
of the Princess, as of the completion of their pier." 

The year 1834 was that in which the Princess was 
confirmed. This Loly rite was administered by the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, in the Chapel Eoyal, St. 
James's, in July. Next month, mother and daughter 
visited Tunbridge Wells ; the month following they 
went northwards, visited the Archbishop of York at 
Bishopsthorpe, and attended the grand musical festival 
in his cathedral. On their homeward route, they were 
entertained by the Earls of Harewood and Pitzwilliam, 
and the Duke of JR^utland ; passed some time with the 
King and Queen of the Belgians, at Ramsgate, and 
finally visited the Duke of WelliDgton at Walmer Castle. 
An incident which occurred during their stay at Tun- 
bridge, must not be omitted from our biography. The 
husband of one of the actresses in the small theatre of 
the place died, leaving an impoverished wife, who was 
just about to become a mother. The fact came to the 
knowledge of the Princess, and she applied to her mother 



THE PEINCESS AND A WIDOWED ACTRESS. 51 

for aid. Slie at once gave £10 to her claiigliter, who 
added an equal sum from her own purse ; she became 
her own^ almoner, hastened to the afHicted woman, 
conversed with her, and continued to make inquiries 
about her condition. Nor did this end her care. When 
she came to the throne, three years later, she at once sent 
to the poor woman a kindly intimation that an annuity 
of £40 would be paid to her for life. 

Another series of visits, and renewed intercourse with 
the much-loved uncle and his young Orleanist wife at 
Eamsgatej filled the autumnal months of 1835. 



E 2 



CHAPTER VII, 

EARLY DAYS OF PRINCE ALBERT. 

Birth — Melancholy Story of his Mother— Brought up under the Care 
of his two Excellent Grandmothers — His Winning Ways as a Child 
— His Tutor, Florschiitz — The Brothers, Ernest and Albert — 
Visit to Brussels, and its Beneficial Effects — Hard Study — Tour 
through Germany, &c. — First Visit to England, and Meeting with 
Victoria — Studies at Brussels — Enters the University of Bonn — . 
Tour to Switzerland and Italy — Public Announcement of 
Betrothal — Leaves Coburg and Gotha for his Marriage. 

Albert, tlie second' son of Duke Ernest I. of Saxe- 
Coburg-Saalfeld, and liis wife, the Princess Louise, 
daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, was 
born at the Rosenau, a charming summer residence 
belonging to the Duke, about four miles from Coburg, 
on the 26th of August, 1819. His mother is described 
as handsome, though of very diminutive proportions, 
fair, with blue eyes; and her son Albert, whom she 
idolised, closely resembled her. She was clever and 
entertaining; yet her marriage was an unhappy one, 
and a separation took place by mutual consent in 1824, 
after which date the Duchess never saw her children. 
Two years later the separation was turned into a divorce. 
The Prince never forgot her. but spoke of her to his 
dying day with much tenderness, and the very first gift 
which he ever made to the Princess Victoria was a little 
pin which his mother had given him. JSTot until the 
Prince wa^s almost a joung man did his mother die, When 



THE INFANT COUSINS VICTORIA AND ALBERT. 53 

she died her race became extinct, save in the persons 
of her two sons. Mar.j years later, her remains were 
brought to Coburg, and laid in the family mausoleum 
beside the Duke and his second wife. This mausoleum 
was not completed until 1860, in which year Queen 
Victoria deposited a votive wreath on the tomb of the 
mother of her husband. Prince Albert's paternal grand- 
mother, the Duchess Dowager of Coburg, in writiDg to 
her daughter, the Duchess of Kent, announcing Albert's 
birth, lauded his beauty, and — little thinking how the 
fortunes of the two infant cousins were to be inter- 
twined hereafter — thus concluded her communication : — 
"How pretty the May Flower (the Princess Victoria, 
born the jDreceding May) will be when I see it in a 
year's time. Siebold cannot sufficiently describe what 
a dear little love it is. XJne bonne fois, adieu ! Kiss 
your husband and children." Siebold was an accoucheuse 
who had attended at the births of both the children. 
On the 19 th of September the Prince was christened, 
and thus named : — Francis Charles Augustus Albert 
Emmanuel. 

The young Prince seems to have been adored as a 
child by all, whether relatives or others, who came in 
contact with him. "He leads captive," said his fond 
mother, when he was two years old, " all hearts by his 
beauty and gentle grace." After the sad separation of 
his father from his mother, the Prince was brought up 
largely under the . care of his father's mother, whom the 
Queen describes, from personal recollection, as "a most 
remarkable woman, with a most powerful, energetic, 
almost masculine mind, accompanied with great tender- 
ness of heart, and extreme love for nature." Of an 



54z LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

evening slie used to tell to her two grandchildren, Ernest 
and Albert, the stories of Sir Walter Scott's novels, and^ 
when they were old enough, employed them in writing 
letters to her dictation. She fondly described Albert, 
when he was not yet two years old, by the pet, diminu- 
tive name, " Alberinchen." And she says — "With his 
large blue eyes and dimpled cheeks, he is bewitching, 
forward, and quick as a weasel. He can already say 
everything." The step-maternal grandmother of the 
Prince too, second wife of his maternal grandfather, 
was sensible, kindly, and good, and took an interest in 
the children by no means inferior to that displayed by 
their own grandmother. With the former lady they 
spent very much of their time in their early years, at 
Gotha, and at her mansion in the vicinity of that town. 

When Albert was not yet four years old he, with 
his brother, was removed to the care of a tutor, Herr 
Plorschiitz, who most admirably discharged his duties, 
which he contiilued to fulfil until his pupils had be- 
come young men. With the assistance of masters for 
special subjects, he conducted the whole of their early 
educational training, and continued to control their 
studies until they leffc the University of Bonn. The 
two brothers, spite of the difference of al^out a twelve- 
month in their ages, pursued all studies in common, 
and the closest brotherly love and amity united them 
from first to last. 

The younger Prince was not nearly so robust as his 
brother, but his intellect was more vigorous, and his 
force of will decidedly greater ; " he always held," said 
his uncle Leopold, " accordingly, a certain sway over his 
elder brother, who rather kindly submitted to it." The 



BOYHOOD OF PRINCE ALBERT 55 

Princes were not much, in tlieir early years, with their 
father, who was much from home, especially when 
settling the junction of the duchy of Gotha with his 
own of Coburg. The former he succeeded to partly in 
right of his wife, and partly by a mutual compact of 
exchange of territory, entered into with other reigning 
princes of the old Saxon stock. This period was passed 
by the Princes at Posenau, with their tutor, varied by 
visits to the mansions of the two grandmothers. 

In a memorandum drawn up by Count Arthur 
Mensdorff, cousin of the Prince, he describes the young 
Albert when about ten years of age, at which period the 
cousins contracted a friendship which lasted unimpaired 
until the Prince's death. His disposition was mild and 
benevolent ; nothing could make him angry, except any- 
thing unjust or dishonest. He was never wild or noisy, 
and his favourite study was natural history. He was a 
good mimic, and had a keen sense of the ludicrous ; but 
he never pushed a joke to the extent of hurting one's 
feelings. His moral purity was as conspicuous as the 
meekness of his disj)osition. 

In November of 1831, the Princes suffered a great 
bereavement in the death of their admirable grand- 
mother, the Duchess Dowager of Coburg ; she died in the 
arms of her two eldest sons. She had, from an early 
period, formed the wish that a marriage should be con- 
tracted between her two grandchildren, Albert and 
Victoria. 

In 1832, the young Princes, in their turn, accom- 
panied their father in a journey to visit their uncle, 
King Leopold. This was a most important event in the 
Prince's life; for, though the visit was of but short 



56 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA* 

duration, the spectacle which he then saw, of a nation 
which had freed itself, and worked out its own destiny, 
had the strongest effect upon his mind and conscience, 
which thence grew in attachment to liberal prifciciples. 
His deeplj-rooted love of art, too, received a strong 
stimulus from the splendid architectural and artistic 
treasures of the old Belgian city. On his return from 
Brussels, being now about thirteen years old, he became 
remarkably studious, and vigorously set himself to the 
pursuit of an unusually comprehensive circle of .subjects. 

The only recreation which he pursued with vigour 
was deer-stalking, and this most beneficially promoted 
the robustness of a frame as yet distinguished by delicacy. 
On Palm Sunday, 1835, he was confirmed, and his heart 
seems, at and from this period, to have come under the 
influence of religious convictions of peculiar depth and 
sincerity, though of singular freedom from all traces of 
bigotry. 

The confirmation of the Princes was immediately 
followed by a series of visits to various of their imperial, 
regal, princely, and noble relatives and friends through- 
out Germany and the provinces on the Danube. They 
visited in succession Mecklenburg, Berlin, Dresden, 
Prague, Vienna, Pesth, and Ofen. In May, 1836, the 
Princes came to England, on a visit to their aunt Kent. 
It was on this occasion that Albert and Victoria first met. 

On his return to the Continent from this his first and 
most gratifying visit to England, the Duke of Coburg 
placed Albert and his elder brother for a time under the 
care of their uncle at Brussels. A private house was 
taken for them, in which they pursued their studies uijder 
Dr. Drury, an English clergyman, who had been appointed 



PHiNCE ALBERT AT COLLEGE. 57 

tlieir tuf or. This gentleman recorded this testimony of 
his pupil, when, shortly afterwards, he was removed from 
his tutelage, and before any idea was entertained about 
his distinguished future position : — " His attainments 
are various, and solid too j his abilities are superior ; his 
disposition amiable; his conduct unexceptionable; and, 
above all, his beliel in, and his attachment to, tlie 
Protestant religion is sincere." 

In the summer following (1837) the two brothers were 
entered as students of law, or, more correctly, of juris- 
prudence (juris studiosi), at the University of Bonn, the 
Oxford of Germany in respect to the high rank of some of 
its students, and standing in the very first place in point 
of intrinsic efficiency. The tutor Florschiitz still accom- 
panied the young men ; and they benefited by the pre- 
lections of such men as Fichte, Perthes, and Augustus 
Schlegel. Prince Albert studied classics, mathematics, 
mental philosophy, political economy, history, and statis- 
tical science. In the last subject he had been well 
grounded at Brussels by the distinguished M. Quetelet, 
who formed the highest opinion of his pupil's powers and 
assiduity. He had, besides, private tutors for music and 
drawing, in both of which arts he was already well 
advanced. In the second stage of his curriculum his 
studies were specially devoted to jurisprudence and civil 
history. While at Bonn he displayed at once a talent 
for poetry and a benevolent heart, by the publication for 
the benefit of the poor of a collection o± songs, which 
his brother set to meritorious musical accompaniments. 
He visited only among his princely fellow-students, and 
at the houses of the professors. His brother and he, 
though they occasionally gave courtly entertainments to 



58 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

their friends, lived in private a temperate and frugal 
life. He assiduously sought out the society of savans 
and men of letters, especially loving to associate with 
Professors Welcker and Schlegel. ' The latter, though he 
detested the ordinary run of "^ princelings," was quite 
charmed by Albert, of whom he thought and spoke most 
highly. The Prince kept only three acadeniical terms, 
and finally left the University, in September, 1838, 
leaving golden opinions everywhere behind him. Not 
the least hearty of his eulogists in after years was Peter 
Stamm, an hotel-keeper, who acted as gamekeeper to him 
on his shooting excursions, and who for years after 
pointed to English visitors the portrait of Prince Albert 
in his sitting-room, his eyes the while brimming over 
with glad tears. The University, after his marriage, 
conferred upon him the honorary degree of .Doctor of. 
Laws, and in the diploma pointed reference was made to 
his " summse fortunse magnitudinem ac gravitatem, summa 
comitate, amabilique morum suavitate et humanitate." 

The winter of 1838-9 was passed by the Prince in 
a tour through Switzerland and Italy. After pursuing 
his journey as far as ISTaples, and omitting no locality of 
interest on the way, he came home by way of Vienna, 
and returned to the Castle of Ehrenberg in the summer 
of 1839. It has been stated that he found, on the wall 
of his room, a miniature of Queen Victoria, by Chalon, 
which she had sent to him as a gift in his absence; 
but we have not discovered any very reliable authority 
for the anecdote. In August, having completed his 
twentieth year, he was formally declared of age. He 
inherited from his mother landed estates amounting to 
£2,400 yearly value. These lands, we have reason to 



PRINCE Albert's betrothal. 59 

believe, he transferred to his brother upon the formal 
announcement of his engagement to Queen Yictoria, 
subject only to pensions and allowances to certain persons 
who had belonged to his modest household. 

On the 8th of December, 1839, his betrothal was 
formally and publicly announced at Coburg. In the 
morning the Ducal family, with the Court officials, at- 
tended Divine service in the chapel of the Castle ; in 
the afternoon, in the presence of the same dignitaries, 
with the deputies of the Duchies of Coburg and Gotha, 
the Chief Minister formally read the announcement of 
the betrothal ; the while the booming of cannon from 
the fortress announced the tidings to the^ people of the 
town and the neighbouring country. About three 
hundred persons in all were present at the ceremony 
within the Castle, including bearers of congratulatory 
addresses, not only from the two duchies, but from 
Austria, Prussia, Hesse, Saxony, and other German states. 
From the report of an English gentleman of high social 
position, who was present on this important occasion, we 
extract, in conclusion, these fuller details : — 

When the Minister (Baron de Carlowitz) had read the proclamation, 
the Duke embraced his son, and th.e Duchess next imprinted a kiss 
upon his forehead, while in every eye might be read the heartfelt wish' 
that all the parents' fondest, proudest hopes might be fully realised. 
More than one hundred and sixty persons partook of the hospitalities 
of the Duke's table, in the "Riesen Saal," or ''Giant's Hall," and a more 
sumptuous or splendid entertainment could not be imagined. The loud 
and cordial cheers which the health of England's Queen called forth, 
and which burst out with an enthusiasm which all the forms of etiquette 
and courtly ceremony could not restrain, were almost too affecting"; 
and when the band struck up '' God save the Queen," the tears of joy 
flowed freely. I must not omit to mention a circumstance charac- 
teristic of the Prince. By his order, the people were admitted into 



60 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

the " Eiesen baal," to see the assembled company. Peasants from the 
hills, old and young, walked about without the smallest restraint, 
to their evident enjoyment; and their hearty exclamations— the 
blessings they invoked on their beloved Prince and his august parents 
— were a more eloquent and stirring panegyric than volumes could 
express. To describe the universal attachment of all classes to the 
Prince were impossible. I have never heard other than the most 
enthusiastic praise — not one dissenting voice from one end of Thuringia 
to the other. If I have remarked the personal beauty of the Prince, 
the general reply has been, *' Ah ! yes, he is certainly handsome, but 
so good ; he is truly a most amiable prince, as good as he is hand- 
some." Persons attached to his suite, and the older members of the 
Court, cannot speak of him without tears, and are quite distressed at 
the thought of his leaving his native land. ... On the 28th of 
December the Prince, accompanied by his father, quitted his paternal 
residence for a short sojourn at Gotha ; and as he bade a last adieu to 
the stately castle of Ehrenberg, the abode of his fathers, and the 
happy scene of his infancy, the tenderest emotions of his nature for a 
moment almost overwhelmed him. A few days prior to his departure, 
a ball was given him by the nobles, at which he was received by 
twelve young ladies, attired in white, and wearing fresh-gathered 
roses ; the Philosophic Society gave him a serenade, and all classes 
joined in affectionate expression of sympathy in their young Prince's 
feelings on this momentous occasion. 

Lord Viscount Torrington and Colonel tlie Honour- 
able Charles Grey, wlio were charged ■with, the two-fold 
mission of investing the Prince with the insignia of 
the Order of the Garter, and escorting him and his 
suite to England, arrived at Gotha early in January, 
1840, and the investiture took place on the 24th, with 
imposing ceremony. The jewels, which were of diamonds 
and of rare workmanship, were a present from the 
Queen. After a series of hospitable festivities in honour 
of the English envoys, Prince Albert set out for England 
on the 28th of the month. 



CHAPTEH VIII. 

THE PRINCESS VICTORIA BECOMES QUEEN REGNANT. 

First Meeting of tlie Princess Victoria and Prince Albert — Coming of 
Age — Festivities on the Occasion — Death, of William IV., and 
Accession of Victoria — The Queen holds her First Privy Council — 
Her Address — Proclamation as Queen at St. James's Palace — 
Beautiful Traits of Character displayed by the Queen — Stirring and 
Gorgeous Scene — Delight of the People at the Queen's Accession. 

The marriage of Prince Albert with the Princess 
Victoria was desired, if not planned, by certain of 
their common relatives, especially the Duchess Dowager 
of Coburg and her son Prince Leopold, almost from the 
period when the cousins were in their cradles. After 
his betrothal, the Prince himself told the Queen that his 
mother, who died in 1831, wished earnestly that he 
should marry her. He first saw his future wife in the 
month of May, 1836, when he and his brother came to 
England on a visit to their aunt. He greatly enjoyed 
this visit to England, and the youthful guests were 
treated by the authorities and the inhabitants of the 
metropolis with the utmost courtesy and attention. 
They were sumptuously entertained at Windsor by the 
King and Queen Adelaide, and were conducted to all 
the great sights of the town by their aunt and cousin. 
On the 24th of May, 1837, the Princess Victoria 
having attained her eighteenth year, was declared legally 
of age, according to the provisions of a recent Act of 



62 LIFE OF QUEEN" VICTORIA. 

Parliament. Amongst the first to congratulate "her on 
tlie happy event was Prince Albert. This happy day 
was kept as a general holiday, and the night made 
brilliant by an illumination. It was celebrated with 
demonstrations of excessive joy at Kensington. At six 
o'clock in the morning the union-jack was hoisted on the 
steeple of the old church, as also on the green sward 
opposite the Palace. That edifice was surmounted by a 
splendid flag of pure white silk, on which was inscribed, 
in letters of ethereal blue, the single word " Victoria." 
From the houses of the principal inhabitants in the 
High Street waved a profusion of other flags. The 
gates of the Gardens were thrown open at six o'clock 
for the admission of the public; and it having got 
wind the previous evening that a serenade would be 
performed at seven o'clock, at which hour Victoria 
first drew breath eighteen years before, the portion of 
the GardcDS next the Palace was thronged by an assem- 
blage of well-dressed persons, including several ladies. 
Congratulatory addresses and innumerable presents — 
amongst the latter, a splendid piano from the King 
— poured in from all quarters. At night a magnificent 
ball in honour of the occasion was given at St. James's 
Palace. 

During these festivities, although it was known 
that the King's health was seriously enfeebled, no one 
imagined that within a month from the attainment of 
her majority the young Princess would become Queen of 
England. The anniversary of Waterloo was always a 
great day with King William. The Duke of Wellington, 
in consideration of the declining state of the King's 
health, proposed not to have the usual banquet at Apsley 



ACCESSION TO THE THRONE. 63 

House; tmi, the day before, "William sent a, message 
desiring that the banquet should take place, and wishing 
the host and guests a pleasant day. By two o'clock on 
the morning of the 20th he was no more. 

Shortly after the demise of the Sovereign, three car- 
riages, conveying the Primate, the Earl of Albemarle 
and Sir Henry Halford, the Royal physician, started 
from Windsor, and arrived at Kensington Palace 
shortly before five o'clock. The doors were thrown 
open before them, and in the early morning sunshine 
stood the Queen of England and her mother, prepared 
for the news, and ready to receive them. At nine 
o'clock, Lord Melbourne, the Premier, arrived at the 
Palace, and had an interview of half an hour with 
his new mistress. Before noon came the Lord Mayor 
and other members of the Corporation. Next to appear 
was the Duke of Cumberland. Miss Martineau thus 
describes the quick succession of incidents which now 
crowded one upon the other with rapid haste : — 

On tlie meeting of the princes, peers, and other councillors, 
they signed the oath of allegiance ; and the first name on the list 
was that of Ernest, King of Hanover. The Queen caused them all 
to be sworn in Members of the Council, and then addressed them ; 
after which they issued orders for the Proclamation of Her Majesty, 
If the millions who longed to know how the young Sovereign looked 
and felt could have heard her first address, it would have gone far to 
satisfy them. The address was, of course, prepared for her ; but the 
manner and voice were her own, and they told much. Her manner 
was composed, modest, and dignified ; her voice firm and sweet ; her 
reading, as usual, beautiful. She took the necessary oaths, and received 
the eager homage of the thronging nobility without agitation or any 
awkwardness. The declaration contained an affectionate reference to 
the deceased King ; an assertion of her attachment to the constitution 
of the country, and of her intention to rule in accordance with it ; a 
grateful allusion to her mother's educational care of her ; an avowal 



6^ LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

that, under circumstances of such eminent responsibility as hers, she 
relied for support and guidance in Divine Providence, and a pledge 
that her life should be devoted to the happiness of her people. The 
Ministers returned into her hands, and received again, the seals of their 
respective offices ; the stamps in official use were ordered to be altered, 
as also the prayers of the Church which related to the Eoyal Family ; 
the Proclamation was prepared and signed by the Privy Councillors, 
and the Queen appointed the next day, Wednesday, for the ceremony. 
The first use of the Great Seal, under the new reign, was to authenti- 
cate the official Proclamation, which was gazetted the same evening. 
During the whole morning, carriages were driving up rapidly, bringing 
visitors eager to offer their homage. What a day of whirl and fatigue 
for one in a position so lonely, at such tender years. How welcome 
must have been the night, and the quiet of her pillow, whatever might 
be the thoughts that rested upon it. The next morning she appeared 
" extremely pale and fatigued," and no wonder, for she had passed 
through a day which could never be paralleled. 

Tlie following is tlie text of her Majesty's speech 
delivered on this occasion to the Privy Council : — 

The severe and afilicting loss' which the nation has sustained by 
the death of His Majesty, my beloved uncle, has devolved upon me 
the duty of administering the Government of this empire. This awful 
responsibility is imposed upon me so suddenly, and at so early a 
period, that I should feel myself utterly oppressed by the burden, were 
I not sustained by the hope that Divine Providence, which has called 
me to this work, will give me strength for the performance of it, and 
that I shall find, in the purity of my intentions, and in ray zeal for 
the public welfare, that support and those resources which usually 
belong to a more mature age and longer experience. I place my firm 
reliance upon the wisdom of Parliament, and upon the loyalty and 
afi'ection of my people, I esteem it also a peculiar advantage that I 
succeed to a sovereign whose constant regard for the rights and liberties 
of his subjects, and whose desire to promote the amelioration of the 
laws and institutions of the country, have rendered his name the object 
of general attachment and veneration. Educated in England, under 
the tender and affectionate oare of a most afi'ectionate mother, I have 
learned from my infancy to respect and love the constitution of my 
native country* It will be my unceasing study to maintain the ¥#' 



PROCLAMATION AS QUEE2S. 6d 

formed religion as by law establislied, securing, at tlie same time, to 
all the full enjoyment of religious liberty ; and I sliall steadily protect 
the rights, and promote to the utmost of my power the happiness and 
welfare of all classes of my subjects. 

The next day, the 21st of June, the Queen was 
publicly proclaimed, under the title of Alexandrina 
Victoria I. ; but since that day she has disused the 
Kussian name bestowed upon her by her Muscovite god- 
father, preferring to retain simply " Victoria." The Queen 
arrived at the Palace at ten o'clock, where she w^s 
received by most of the members of the Koyal Family, 
the Officers of the Household, and Ministers of State. 
Long before ten all the avenues to the Palace were 
crowded, every balcony, window, and housetop being 
crammed with the better class of spectators. The space 
in the quadrangle in front of the window where Her 
Majesty was to appear, was crowded with ladies and 
gentlemen, and even the parapets above were filled with 
people. 

At ten o'clock the guns in the Park fired a salute, 
and immediately after the Queen made her appearance 
at the window of the tapestried ante-room adjoining the 
audience chamber, and v/as received with deafening 
cheers — cheers all the more hearty that her appearance 
was a surprise, for few had known that she was to be 
there present. She was dressed in deep mourning, with 
a white tippet, white cuffs, and a border of Avliite lace 
under a sma,li black bonnet, which was placed far back 
on her head, exhibiting her light brown hair simply 
parted in front. She viewed the proceedings with 
intense interest, standing during the whole rehearsal of 
the Proclamation j and although she looked pale and 

F 



^Q LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

fatigued, slie returned tlie repeated rounds of cheers 
with great grace and dignity. All were touched to very 
tenderness of soul by the pale face, wet with tears, calm, 
and simply grave, the gravity being enhanced by the 
plain black dress and bands of brown hair, giving an 
aspect of Quaker-like neatness. On either side stood 
Lords Melbourne and Lansdowne, in their state dresses 
and blue ribbons, and close to her was her mother, who 
. was dressed similarly to the Queen. 

In the court-yard were Garter King-at-Arms, with 
Heralds and Pursuivants in their robes of office, and eight 
Officers-of-Arms on liorseback, bearing massive silver 
maces ; Sergeants-at-Arms, with their maces and collars ; 
the Sergeant-Trumpeter, with his mace and collar ; the 
trumpets, drum-major and drums, and Knights Marshal 
and men. On Her Majesty showing herself at the 
Presence Chamber window. Garter Principal King-at- 
Arms, having taken his station in the court-yard under 
the window, accompanied by the Duke of Norfolk as 
Earl Marshal of England, read the Proclamation, con- 
taining the formal and official announcement of the 
demise of King William IV., and of the consequent 
accession of Queen Alexandrina Yictoria to the rule of 
these realms. The Proclamation was brief, and to the 
point : — 

Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God to call to His mercy our 
late Sovereign Lord, King William IV., of blessed memory, by whose 
decease the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
and Ireland is solely and rightfully come to the High and Mighty 
Princess Alexandrina Victoria, we therefore, the Lords Spiritual and 
Temporal of this Eealm, being here assisted with these of his late 
Majesty's Privy Council, Avith numbers of other principal gentlemen of 
quality, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and citizens of London, do now 



THE QUEEN AND THE DUKE OF SUSSEX. 67 

hereby with one voice and consent of tongue, proclaim that the High 
and Mighty Princess Alexandrina Victoria is now, by the death of onr 
late Sovereign William IV., of happy memory, become our only 
lawful and rightful Liege Lady, Alexandrina Victoria L, Queen of 
Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, ... to whom 
we acknowledge all faith and constant obedience, with all humble and 
hearty affection, beseeching God, by whom Kings and Queens do 
reign, to bless the Royal Princess Alexandrina Victoria .with long and 
happy years to reign. God Save the Queen. 

, At the termination of this Proclamation, the band 
struck up the Natioual Anthem, and a signal was given 
for the Park and Tower guns to fire, in order to 
announce the fact of the Proclamation being made. 
Amid the booming of the guns, the air was rent with 
cheers by those within the area, which were taken up by 
the tens of thousands outside. The enthusiasm of the 
comparative few who could see Victoria rose to rapture 
when, the moment she was proclaimed Queen, she turned 
round, threw her arms round her mother's neck, and 
wept without restraint. And when her loved uncle, the 
Duke of Sussex, presented himself, the day before, to 
take the oath of allegiance, and was about to kneel in 
her presence to kiss her hand, she gracefully prevented 
him, kissed his cheek affectionately, and said, "Do not 
kneel, my uncle, for I am still Victoria, your niece." 

The feelings of gratification with which the people 
welcomed the accession of Victoria cannot be depicted 
in terms too strong. To most, the course of years 
seemed very short during which they had been eagerly 
watching the growth and training of the Princess. It 
seemed — at least, to all but the young — but a matter 
of yesterday that the newspapers had informed them 
of the birth of the Poyal babe; of the Duke of 



68 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

Kent's illness : liow lie had come home from a walk 
with wet boots, and, "beguiled by the smiles of his 
infant Princess," had played with her, instead of 
changing his clothes, and thus caught the cold of 
which he died. And here she was now, a woman, 
and the sovereign ruler of a hundred million of souls. 
All they had heard of her was favourable. Sinister 
rumours and alarms there had been, but they had 
been dissipated and dispersed like the morning's mist 
before the rising god of day. Her morals were pure, 
her conduct spotless, and in all arts and accomplish- 
ments she had been carefully trained. From her earliest 
days she had been abroad in all weathers; having been 
often seen, when it was stormy, on a windy common, with 
a warm cloak and thick boots. She kept early hours, and 
was so exactly and proverbially punctual, that it was 
mentioned as a marvel that she once had to apologise for 
being half a minute late in an appointment. She had never 
been known to exceed her pocket-money in her personal 
expenditure, or to be sixpence in debt — an extraordinary 
novelty in a descendant of George III. 

In the first year of her reign the people were de- 
lighted to find that she had paid her father's debts, 
including considerable sums advanced by his warm 
friends, Lords Fitzwilliam and Dundas. Next she paid 
her mother's debts — debts unavoidably contracted, as she 
knew and acknowledged, on her account. She provided 
with royal munificence for the whole family of the late 
sovereign, and honoured them with courtesies and kind- 
nesses, which almost obliterated the pain arising from 
their dubious position. Yet she lived within her income, 
and paid as she purchased. 



CIIAPTSE. IX. 

THE MAIDEN QUEEN. 

Removal to Buckingham Palace — First Levee — Dissolves Parliament — 
Beauty of her Elocution — Splendid Reception by the City of 
London — Settlement of the Queen's Income — Her Daily Life — 
Her admirahle Knowledge of, and Devotion to, the Business of 
the State — Reverence for the Lord's Day. 

Greatly to the regret of the inhabitants of Kensington, 
the Queen, with her mother, took her final departure 
from the abode where she was born, and in which she 
had spent so many happy days, and proceeded to Buck- 
ingham Paltice, on July 13th. The Queen, on this 
occasion, looked pale, and her countenance had a very 
natural, and easily accounted for, aspect of deep regret. 
Immediately afterwards she held a Court Levee. It 
was, of course, thronged by her loyal subjects who had 
the privilege of entree ; but there was no appearance of 
fatigue in her face, voice, or manner, and the day passed 
off with spirit and brilliancy. She seemed to have 
acquired (so say the court chroniclers of the period), if 
possible, increased grace and dignity. She wore a rich 
lama dress, her head glittered with diamonds, and her 
breast was covered with the insignia of the Garter and 
other orders. A pair of embroidered velvet slippers 
covered feet which, resting on the cushion, were observed 
and admired by all as " exquisitely small," 



70 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

On the 17tli of July she went in state to the House 
of Lords to dissolve the Parliament, in accordance with 
constitutional usage and enactment on the demise of the 
Crown. After thanking both Houses for their expres- 
sions of condolence on the death of her uncle, and for 
the zeal and assiduity with which they had discharged 
their duties, especially for their efforts to mitigate the • 
severity of the penal code, she concladed by saying : — 

I ascend tlie throne with a deep sense of the responsibility which, 
is imposed upon me ; but I am supported by the consciousness of my 
own right intentions, and by my dependence upon the protection of 
Almighty God. It will be my care to strengthen our institutions, 
civil and ecclesiastical, by discreet improvement wherever improve- 
ment is required, and to do all in my power to compose and allay 
animosity and discord. Acting upon these principles, I shall, upon all 
occasions, look with confidence to the wisdom of Parliament and the 
affections of my people, which form the true support of the dignity of 
the Crown, and ensure the stability of the Constitution. 

The admirable manner in which the speech was read — 
her singularly musical voice being heard, without the 
slightest appearance of effort, in every corner of the 
House of Lords — was the subject of the admiration of 
all who heard it. It was, indeed, known that she was 
a fine singer, and frequently entertained her mother's 
guests by singing to them, her mother accompanyiug 
her on the piano ; nevertheless, the lucidity of her tones, 
and the entire absence of any discomposure to disturb 
them, surprised every one, and no one more so than her 
mother. 

The Queen went in great state to the City on Lord 
Mayor's Day, November 9. This royal entry was one of 
the greatest sights which had ever been beheld in the City. 
The Queen, looking remarkably well, magnificently at- 



STATE VISIT TO THE CITY. 71 

tired in pink satin shot with silver, was greeted with 
deafening cheers from a crowd far denser than any she 
had ever seen, along her whole route from Marlborough 
House (her temporary residence until Buckingham Palace 
was completed for her occupation) to the Guildhall. The 
houses along the thoroughfares by which the cavalcade 
passed were hung with bright-coloured cloths, with green 
boughs, and with what flowers the earth could afford at 
the late season of the year. Flags aud heraldic banners 
darkened the dim November light across the Strand, 
Meet Street, and Cheapside; and every pedestal that 
could be improvised supported a bust of Queen Victoria. 
At Temple Bar the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, mounted 
on artillery horses from Woolwich, each of the steeds 
being held by the head by the soldier who was ac- 
customed to bestride him, awaited their distinguished 
guest. The Lord Mayor, dismounting and taking the 
City Sword in his hand, delivered the keys, which 
were graciously returned, while more vociferous cheers 
than ever rent the air. On which, the Lord Mayor, 
re-mounting and holding the City Sword aloft, rode 
before Her Majesty through the City, the cortege of 
mounted Aldermen following her carriage. The o^Den 
space before St. Paul's was occupied by hustings, crowded 
by the Liverymen of the City Companies and the Christ's 
Hospital boys. One of these, in conformity with an old 
usage, having presented an address to the Queen, and the 
whole of the boys having sung " God save the Queen,'* 
the procession went on its way. At the Guildhall, which, 
with all its adjacent chambers, was sumptuously fitted up, 
a loyal address was read by the Kecorder, and suitably 
acknowledged. After this came a sumptuous banquet, 



12 LIFE OF QUEEN YICTORIA. 

from whicli Her Majesty retired, to see on her way back 
the whole line of the route brilliantly illuminated. 

The first message which the Queen sent to Parlia- 
ment when it re-assembled, was a truly characteristic 
one : it asked for a suitable provision for her royal mother. 
This provision was loyally made, and in the same short 
winter session her own civil list was settled. "William 
TV. had enjoyed a civil list amounting to £510,000, 
while, from the accession of George III. to the death of 
his eldest son, it had been fixed at .£1,030,000. Her 
Majesty's civil list was fixed at £385,000 per annum, 
and her privy purse, being the only sum over which she 
had complete personal control, and from which her 
private charities had to be disbursed, was fixed at 
£80,000. Out of the £385,000 the calculation, based 
by order of Parliament upon the accounts of the late 
reign, was that £131,260 would go for salaries of the 
Household, from the Master of the Horse and Mistress 
of the Pobes, down to the humblest scullion and stable- 
helper ; and £172,500 in tradesmen's bills. 

During the early days of her maiden reign, the 
Queen rose at eight, occupied a remarkably short time 
in dressing, and then discharged such routine business 
as signing despatches until the breakfast hour, which 
was invariably a quarter before ten. At that hour, 
she without fail sent one of her attendants to invite 
the Duchess of Kent to breakfast. From the day 
of her ascending the throne, to remove the slightest 
ground for suspicion as to any undue influence, the 
strictest etiquette was preserved between mother and 
daughter ; the former never approaching the latter 
unless specially summoned, and carefully abstaining from 



REYEREXCE FOR SUNDAY. 73 

conversing about the business of tlie State. Twelve 
o'clock was the time appointed for conferences with her 
Ministers. After the usual complimentary salutation, 
she at once proceeded to the business of the day. If a 
document were handed to her, she read it without com- 
ment, and no remark passed her own lips or those of the 
Ministers present, until its perusal was concluded. After 
retiring from the Council-room, the interval was passed 
until dinner in riding or walking. At dinner, the first 
Lord-in- waiting took the head of the table ; opposite to 
him, the chief Equerry-in- waiting. Her Majesty's chair 
was half way down on the right, the various guests 
being seated according to their ranks. Next to Her 
Majesty, on the right hand, was the nobleman of highest 
degree ; next to him, the Duchess of Kent, and so on. 
On Her Majesty's left, the same rule was observed, 
the Baroness Lehzen, who acted as Secretary to the 
Queen, being always near her. The Queen left the 
table early for the drawing-room, where her musical 
tastes were regaled almost invariably, and her own pro- 
ficiency very frequently displayed. 

The following incident, which was made public during 
the first year of the Queen's reign, made a very pleasing 
impression upon the well-conditioned portion of the 
public. A certain noble Minister arrived at Windsor 
at a late hour on Saturday night. On being introduced, 
he said, " I have brought down for your Majesty's 
inspection some documents of great importance ; but, as 
I shall be obliged to trouble you to examine them in 
detail, I will not encroach on the time of your Majesty 
to-night, but will request your attention to-morrow 
morning." " To-morrow morning ?" repeated the Queen ; 



74: LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOEIA, 

" to-morrow is Sunday, my lord." "True, your Majesty, 
but business of the State will not admit of delay." " I 
am aware of that," replied the Queen, " and, as your 
lordship could not have arrived earlier at the Palace 
to-night, I will, if those papers are of such pressing 
importance, attend to their contents after church to- 
morrow morning." So to church went the Queen and 
the Court, and to church went the noble lord ; when, 
much to his surprise, the discourse was on the duties and 
obligations of the Christian Sabbath. " How did your 
lordship like the sermon?" asked the Queen. "Very 
much indeed, your Majesty," replied the nobleman. 
"Well, then," retorted Her Majesty, "I will not con- 
ceal from you that, last night, I sent the clergyman the 
text from which he preached. I hope we shall all be 
improved by the sermon." The Sunday passed without 
a single word being said relative to the State papers, and 
at night, when Her Majesty was about to withdraw — 
" To-morrow morning, my lord, at any hour you please," 
said the Queen, turning to the nobleman — " as early as 
seven, my lord, if you like, we will look into the papers." 
The nobleman said that he could not think of intruding 
on Her Majesty at so early an hour ; he thought nine 
o'clock would be quite soon enough. " No, no, my lord," 
said the Queen ; " as the papers are of importance, I 
wish them to be attended to very early. However, if 
you wish it to be nine, be it so." And accordingly, th^ 
next morning at nine. Her Majesty was seated ready to 
receive the nobleman and his papers. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE QUEEN CROWNED. 

Novel Features in the Coronation — Its Cost — Large Amount of Money 
Circulated — Splendour of the Procession — Enormous Crowds — 
The Scene within the Abbey — Arrival of the Queen — The Eegalia 
and Sacred Vessels — Costume of the Queen — Astonishment of the 
Turkish Ambassador at the Scene — The Coronation Ceremony — 
The Queen's Oath — The Anointing — The Crown placed on her 
Head — The Homage — An Aged Peer — The Queen's Crown — The 
Illuminations and general Festivities — Fair in Hyde Park — The 
Duke of Wellington and Marshal Soult at the Guildhall. 

The great event of the year 1 838 was the Coronation, 
which took place on the 28th of June. It was conducted 
after the abridged model of that of the Queen's immediate 
predecessor. The Coronation of George lY. had cost 
£243,000; that of William lY., £50,000. The charges on 
the occasion of the crowning of Queen Victoria amounted 
to about £70,000. This slight excess over the cost of 
the last Sovereign's solemn investiture with regal power 
was explained by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as 
having been in no sense occasioned by any part of the 
ceremonial peculiarly connected with the Sovereign, but 
it had been incurred with a view of enabling the great 
mass of the people to participate in this national festivity. 
The great novelty on the occasion was the omission of the 
walking procession of all the estates of the realm, and 
the banquet in Westminster Hall, with the feudal ser- 
vices attendant thereon. Many of the upper classes 



76 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

grumbled not a little at these omissions ; but the general 
public were more than proportionately gratified. For 
in lieu of the disused ceremonies, a public procession 
through the streets was substituted. This enabled all 
to witness the splendid pageant, and induced a very large 
private expenditure and circulation of money. It was 
estimated that no less than £200,000 were paid for the 
use of windows and other positions of vantage in the 
line of the procession. The price of single seats ranged 
from five shillings to ten guineas; and the Duke of 
Buckingham, in his " Courts and Cabinets of William IV. 
and Victoria," alleges that single windows in Pall Mall 
and St. James's Street produced no less than .£200. 
Persons of distinction behaved with a becoming liberality 
and splendour. Marshal Soult, the old opponent of 
Wellington, who specially represented on the occasion 
the Court of the Tuileries, and who was received by 
the crowds with great enthusiasm, appeared in a splendid 
state carriage that had been used by the Prince of Conde. 
The Pussian Ambassador purchased for £1,600 a similar 
chariot, which had already done the same duty for the 
Duke of Devonshire, at St. Petersburg, on a like occasion. 
Another diplomat gave £250 for the loan for the day of 
a vehicle befitting his rank ; while many more had to 
content themselves with carriages whose normal function 
it was to minister to the state of the civic magnates, 
and which were hastily repainted and decorated for the 
auspicious occasion. 

The day was one of the brightest on which the Queen, 
with her proverbial good fortune in this respect, has ever 
appeared amongst her subjects. At early morn, the first 
X-ays of the blazing Midsummer sun slanted down through 



ORDER OP THE PROCESSION. 77 

the windows of "Westminster Abbey upon the jewels of 
whole rows of peeresses, and the illuminations which turned 
night into day remained in full magnificence until the 
dawn of the succeeding morning. At dawn, a salvo of 
artillery from the Tower caused all the population to be 
astir, and the population was on this day increased by 
the importation of four hundred thousand visitors. The 
behaviour of the enormous multitude which first lined 
the streets and then spread itself over the town, was 
beyond all praise. Courtesy and mutual forbearance 
were conspicuous, and no accident or ofience occurred 
to mar the pleasing impressions of the ceremonial. 

The route of the procession was as follows : — Erom 
Buckingham Palace, up Constitution Hill, along Pic- 
cadilly, St. James's Street, Pall Mall, Cockspur Street, 
Charing Cross, Whitehall, and Parliament Street, to 
the great west door of Westminster Abbey. The most 
novel feature of the procession was the carriages of the 
Foreign Ambassadors, to which we have already alluded, 
with their jagers in gorgeous or grotesque uniforms. 
These came in the order in which they had arrived on 
their special missions to this country ; the carriages of the 
regular resident Ambassadors came in their ordinary order 
of precedence. Next followed the members of the Poyal 
Family, the Duchess of Kent preceding the carriages of 
the surviving sons of George III. To the Queen's Barge 
Master, with forty-eight watermen, succeeded twelve of 
the Royal carriages, containing the Ladies and Gentlemen 
of the Household. Next came mounted, three and three, 
the high functionaries of the Army. And after Eoyal 
huntsmen, yeomen, prickers, marshalmen, foresters, and 
a host of other minor functionaries — the whole of the 



78 - LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

mounted Houseliold Troops being liere and there inter- 
spersed at intervals in tlie cavalcade — came the grand 
state coacli, containing Her Majesty the Queen, with the 
Duchess of Sutherland, Mistress of the Robes. On either 
side of the carriage rode Lord Combermere, Gold Stick in 
Waiting, and the Earl of llchester, Captain of the Yeo- 
men of the Guard. The Earl of Albemarle, as Master 
of the Horse, and the Duke of Buccleuch, as Captain- 
General of the Royal Scottish Archers, rode behind. A 
squadron of Life Guards brought up the rear. 

Meanwhile, within the Abbey, a painful sleepiness had 
oppressed those who had sat so many hours in cramped 
positions ; many of them in galleries perched up high 
under the roofs of the aisles. Suddenly, a burst of music, 
rushing among the arches and ringing from the roof, 
aroused and entranced all, who peered eagerly down 
upon the procession of small figures ; the central one 
looking the slightest and most fragile of all. At half- 
past eleven, the Queen reached the door of the Abbey, 
where she was received by the great officers of State, 
the noblemen bearing the Regalia^ and the bishops carry- 
ing Patina, Chalice, and Bible. Having retired to her 
Robing-room, the procession formed and proceeded towards 
the altar, which was laden with magnificent gold plate, 
and beside which stood St. Edward's Chair. Besides the 
elements which are common to all great English regal 
processions, and which it is, therefore, not requisite to 
recapitulate, the Regalia, which only appear on such 
occasions, were thus distributed : — St. Edward's Staff, the 
Golden Spurs, the Sceptre with the Cross, the Curtana, 
and two Swords of Investiture, were borne respectively 
by the Duke of Roxburgh, Lord Byron, Duke of Cleve- 



THE CORONATION. 79 

land, Duke of Devonshire, Marquis of Westminster, and 
Duke of Sutherland. The coronets of the princes of 
the blood were borne by noblemen; their trains by 
knights or peers' sons. Next came the Earl Marshal, 
Duke of N'orfolk, with his staff, Lord Melbourne with 
the Sword of State, and the Duke of Wellington, with 
his staff, as Lord High Constable ; the Dukes of Rich- 
mond, Hamilton, and Somerset bore the Sceptre and 
Dove, St. Edward's Crown, and the Orb ; the Bishops of 
Bangor, Winchester, and London carried the Patina, 
Chalice, and Bible. The Queen, who was supported on 
one side by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, on the other 
by the Bishop of Durham, wore a royal robe of crimson 
velvet, furred with ermine and broidered with gold lace. 
She wore the collars of her orders, and on her head 
a circlet of gold. Eight peers' daughters bore her train, 
most, if not all of them, old friends of her happy childish 
tours to the mansions of the aristocracy, and distin- 
guished by their personal attractions. About fifty ladies 
of rank, occupying various positions in the household, 
succeeded, and the procession was concluded by Officers 
of State and Yeomen of the Guard. 

The chief and most picturesque incidents in the 
Coronation ceremony must be briefly narrated. The 
Queen looked extremely well, and " had a very animated 
countenance j" but perhaps the splendid attire of some 
of the foreign ambassadors attracted more attention than 
even the Sovereign to whose court they were accredited. 
The costume of the Prince Esterha^y was by far the most 
gorgeous ; his dress, even to his boot-heels, sparkled with 
diamonds. The Turkish Ambassador seemed specially 
bewildered at the general splendour of the scene : for 



80 LIFE OF QUEEH" VICTORIA. 

some moments he stopped in astonishment, and had 
to be courteously admonished to move to his allotted 
place. 

As the Queen advanced slowly to the centre of the 
choir, she was received with hearty plaudits, and the 
musicians sang the anthem, " I was glad." At its close, 
the boys of Westminster School, privileged of old to 
occupy a special gallery, chanted " Yivat Victoria 
Kegina." On this the Queen moved to a chair, midway 
between the Chair of Homage and the altar ; and there, 
after a few moments' private devotion, kneeling on a 
fald-stool, she sat down, and the ceremony proper began. 
First came the "recognition." The Archbishop of 
Canterbury, accompanied by some half-dozen of the 
greatest civil dignitaries, advanced and said, " Sirs, I 
here present unto you Queen "Victoria, the undoubted 
Queen of this realm ; wherefore, all you who have come 
this day to do your homage, are you willing to do the 
same?" On this, all Her Majesty's subjects present 
shouted, "God Save Queen Victoria !" the Archbishop 
turning in succession to the north, south, and west sides 
of the Abbey, and the Queen doing the same. The 
bishops who bore them, then placed the Patina, Chalice, 
and Bible on the altar ; the Queen, kneeling, made her 
first offering, a pall, or altar-cloth, of gold. The Arch- 
bishop having offered a prayer, the E-egalia were laid 
on the altar ; the Litany and Communion services were 
read, and a brief sermon preached, by various prelates. 
The preacher was the Bishop of London, and his text 
was from the Second Book of Chronicles, chapter xxxiv., 
verse 31 — "And the king stood in his place, and made 
a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, an^ 



11 



THE HOMAGE OF THE PEERS. 81 

to keep his commandments, and his testimonies, and 
his statutes, with all his heart, and with all his soul, to 
perform the words of the covenant which are written in 
this book." 

After the sermon, the Queen swore — the Archbishop 
of Canterbury putting the oath — that she would main- 
tain the law and the established religion. Then Her 
Majesty — the Sword of State being carried before her — 
went to the altar, and laying her right hand upon the 
Gospel, said, kneeling, " The things which I have here- 
before promised, I will perform and keep. So help 
me, God !" Having kissed the book, and signed a 
transcript of the oath presented to her by the Arch- 
bishop, she knelt upon her fald-stool, while the choir 
sang, " Yeni, Creator, Dominus." 

Now, sitting in King Edward's Chair, four Knights 
of the Garter holding the while over her head a canopy 
of cloth of gold, her head and hands were anointed by 
the Archbishop of Canterbury ; after which he said his 
prayer, or blessing, over her. In quick succession fol- 
lowed the delivery of the Spurs, Sword of State, &c. 
The Dean of Westminster, having taken the crown from 
the altar, handed it to the Archbishop, who reverently 
placed it on the Queen's head. This was no sooner done, 
than there arose from every part of the edifice a tre- 
mendous shout — "God save the Queen!" accompanied 
with lusty cheers and the waving of hats and handker- 
chiefs. At the same moment, the Peers and Peeresses 
put on their coronets, the Bishops their caps, and the 
Kings of Arms their crowns j the trumpets sounded, the 
drums were beat, and volleys fired from the Tower and 
Park guns. After the Benediction and Te Deum, the 



82 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

Queen was *^ enthroned," or " lifted," ^s the formulary- 
lias it, from the chair in which she had first sat into the 
Chair of Homage, where she delivered the sceptre, &c,, 
to noblemen, while she received fealty of her more dis- 
tinguished subjects. The Archbishop first knelt and did 
homage for himself and all the spiritual peers ; next 
came the Princes of the blood, who merely touched the 
crown, kissed her left cheek, swore the oath of homage, 
and retired without kneeling ; then the Peers in suc- 
cession came — seventeen dukes, twenty-two marquises, 
ninety-four earls, twenty viscounts, and ninety-two 
barons. Each Peer knelt bareheaded, and kissed Her 
Majesty's hand. Lord PoUe, who was upwards of eighty, 
stumbled and fell in going up the steps ; the Queen at 
once stepped forward, and held out her hand to assist 
him. While the Peers were doing homage, the Earl of 
Surrey, Treasurer of the Household, threw silver coro- 
nation medals about the choir and lower galleries ; and 
when the homage was completed the Members of the 
House of Commons, who occupied a special gallery, 
indicated their loyalty by giving nine lusty cheers. 
It was almost a quarter to four when the procession came 
back along the nave. The return cavalcade along the 
streets was even more attractive than that of the 
morning, for the royal and noble personages now 
wore their coronets, and the Queen her crown. The 
crown was especially admired. That which had been 
made for George TV. weighed upwards of seven pounds, 
and as it was considered too heavy for the Queen, a new ' 
one was constructed by Messrs. Pundell and Bridge, of 
less than half the weight. It was formed of hoops of 
silver, covered with precious stones, over a cap of rich 



COKONATION FESTIVITIES. 83 

blue velvet, surmounted with a ball enriched by dia- 
monds. Amongst its other gems was a large heart- 
sliaped ruby, which had been worn by the Black Prince ; 
this was set in front. 

In the evening the Queen entertained a hundred 
guests to dinner at Buckingham Palace, and at a late 
hour witnessed from the roof the fireworks in the Green 
Park. At Apsley Plouse, the Duke of Wellington gave a 
ball, to which two thousand guests were invited. All the 
Cabinet Ministers gave state dinners. A fair was held in 
Hyde Park on the day of the coronation — Thursday — 
and until the end of the week. The area allotted com- 
prised nearly one-third of the Park. On Friday, the 
Queen visited the fair, which was studded with theatres, 
refreshment booths, and stalls for the sale of fancy 
articles. The illuminations and fireworks gave great 
satisfaction, as did the fact that the whole of the theatres 
were opened gratuitously at the Queen's express desire. 
Among other festivities, at home and abroad, which 
succeeded and were held in honour of the coronation of 
Victoria, may be mentioned a grand review by Her 
Majesty in Hyde Park; a magnificent banquet at the 
Guildhall, at which the old Waterloo antagonists, 
Wellington and Soult, were toasted in combination ; the 
feasting of 13,000 persons on one spot at Cambridge ; 
the laying of the first stone of the St. George's Hall, 
at Liverpool, and at Leghorn of an English Protestant 
Church ; and a great public dinner, in Paris, presided 
over by Sir Sidney Smith, the hero of St. Jean d'Acre. 



G 2 



CHAPTEE XL 

THE BEDCHAMBER PLOT. 

Eesigiiation of Lord Melbourne's CalDinet— Sir Eobert Peel sent foi 
• — Fails to Form a Cabinet — His Explanation — The Queen 
Kefuses to Dismiss her Ladies of the Bedchamber — Supported 
by her late Ministers — Sir Eobert Peel's Objections — The 
Queen will not give way — The "Whigs recalled to Power— Public 
Opinion on the Dispute — The Whig Ministers blamed, but the 
Queen exculpated. 

In April, 1839, Lord Melbourne's administration, which 
had been rapidly losing its once great popularity, obtained 
only the small and nominal majority of five, in a very 
important matter connected with the government of 
Jamaica. The Ministers accordingly tendered their re- 
signations early in May, and Her Majesty was graciously 
pleased to accept them. As usual under such circum- 
stances, the Parliament was prorogued for a few days. 
After the lapse of a week, the Houses re-assembled, 
and Lord John Kussell, who had been the Whig leader 
of the House, immediately rose and said that since he 
had last addressed them, Sir Kobert Peel had received 
authority from Her Majesty to form a new Administra- 
tion, and that the attempt of the Pight Honourable 
Baronet having failed. Her Majesty had been graciously 
pleased to permit that gentleman to state the circum- 
stances which had led to that fail are. 

On her accession, the Queen had left the selection of 



THE BEDCHAMBER PLOT. 85 

the Ladies of the Household entirely to her uncle 
Sussex, and Lord Melbourne — the one of whom had 
been a Whig all his life, and the other, though but 
a comparatively recent convert, was the head of the 
Whig party. They had somewhat indiscreetly selected 
at least all the important female members of the House- 
hold, those to whom a young girl would be likely to 
look up confidingly for information and guidance, from 
the ranks of the Whig aristocracy. On Tuesday, the 
29th of May, the resignations of the Melbourne 
Cabinet were announced to Parliament. The next 
day, at two o'clock, in answer to her summons. Sir 
Kobert Peel waited upon the Queen. She had first 
sent for the Duke of Yf ellington, but he recommended 
his former lieutenant and future leader as premier. The 
Queen, with characteristic truthfulness, which was none 
the less admirable that it was too girlishly outspoken to 
be judicious, or at all in accordance with the spirit of 
the constitution, at once greeted Sir Pobert with an 
avowal that she was much grieved to part vath her 
late Ministers, whose conduct she entirely approved. 
This was rather an awkward beginning. Nevertheless, 
he proceeded with the formation of his Cabinet, a-nd the 
next day submitted a list of names to the Queen, in- 
cluding the Duke of Wellington, Lords Lyndhurst, 
Aberdeen, Ellenborough, Stanley, Sir James Graham, 
and Mr. Goulburn. As to the Household, he had 
hardly thought about it, and indeed he said he did 
not know who constituted the female part of it. He 
took the Ped Book to learn who they were, and was 
at once struck with the completeness of the arrange- 
ments for surrounding the Queen with the nearest 



86 ^ LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

relations of the Whig Ministers. For example, he 
afterwards put this point most strongly to the House : — 

Sir, let me take that particular question on which my difficulty 
woiild arise. Who can conceal from himself that my difficulties were 
not Canada ; that my difficulties were not Jamaica ; that my difficulties 
were Ireland ? (ironical cheers). I admit it freely, and thank you for 
the confirmation of my argument which these cheers afford. And 
what is the fact ? I, undertaking to he a Minister of the Crown, 
and wishing to carry on public affairs through the intervention of 
the present House of Commons, in order that I might exempt the 
country from the agitation, and, possibly, the peril of a dissolution — I, 
upon that very question in a minority of upwards of twenty members. 
A majority of twenty-two had decided in favour of the policy of the 
Irish Government [that is, of the Irish policy of Lord Melbourne]. 
The chief members of the Irish Government, whose policy was so 
approved of, were the Marquis of Normanby, and the noble lord 
opposite, the member for Yorkshire [Lord Morpeth, afterwards the 
Earl of Carlisle]. By whom are the chief offices in the Household 
at this moment held ? By the sister of Lord Morpeth [the Duchess of 
Sutherland], and the wife of the Marquis of Normanby. But the 
question is — Would it be considered by the public that a Minister 
had the confidence of the Crown, when the relatives of his immediate 
political opponents held the highest offices about the person of the 
Sovereign ? My impression decidedly was that I should not appear 
to the country to be in possession of that confidence ; and that 
impression I could not overcome ; and upon that impression I re- 
solved to act. Who were my political opponents ? Why, of the 
two I have named, one, the Marquis of Normanby, was publicly 
stated to be a candidate for the very same office which it was 
proposed I should fill — namely, the office of Prime Minister. The 
other noble lord has been designated as the leader of this House ; 
and I know not why his talents might not justify his appointment, 
in case of the retirement of his predecessor. Is it possible — I ask you 
to go back to other times ; take Pitt, or Fox, or any other Minister of 
this proud country, and answer for yourselves this question — is it 
fitting that one man shall be the Minister, responsible for the most 
arduous charge that can fall to the lot of man, and that the wife of 
the other — that other his most formidable political enemy— shall, with 
his express consent, hold office in immediate attendance on the 



THE QUEEN AND SIR EGBERT PEEL. 87 

Sovereign ? Oh. no ! I felt it was impossible — I could not consent 
to this. Yes, feelings more powerful than reasoning on those pre- 
cedents told me that it was not for my own honour or the public 
interests that I should consent to be Minister of England. The 
public interests may suffer nothing by my abandonment of that bigh 
trust ; the public interests may suffer nothing by my eternal exclusion 
from power ; but the public interests would suffer, and I should be 
abandoning my duty to myself, my country, and, above all, to the 
Queen my sovereign, if I were to consent to hold power on conditions 
whicb I felt to be — which I had the strongest conviction were — 
incompatible with the authority and witb the duty of a Prime 
Minister. 

Sir Robert had informed Her Majesty that he did 
not propose any change in the offices in question below 
the grade of Ladies of the Bedchamber. He took it for 
granted that the ladies who held higher offices would 
save him any appearance of want of courtesy by volun- 
tarily resigning. Ere this, however, had been stated, 
the Queen having expressed a desire that her own and 
her mother's old friend. Lord Liverpool (who, it may 
be remarked, was of the Tory party), should be ap- 
pointed to some office, Sir Robert at once requested the 
Queen's permission to offer him the office of Lord 
Steward, or any other which he might select. The 
only other names which he submitted to her were those 
of Lords Ashley (now Shaftesbury), and Sydney. So far 
all was well. But when he went on to say that he was 
most ready to apply a similar principle to, and consult 
Her Majesty's wishes in, the selection of her ladies, the 
Queen remarked that she should reserve all these ap- 
pointments, and indeed did not intend to make any 
present change. In a subsequent interview with the 
Duke of Wellington, the Queen reiterated the same 
desire and intention. Meanwhile, after her interviews 



88 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

witH Peel and Wellington, Her Majesty sent for Lord 
John Russell, and put the direct question to him, Was 
she right in her determination? He at once replied 
that she was right ; on which she naively asked him to 
support her now, as she had supported the Cabinet of 
which he had been a member. Lord John having con- 
sulted Lord Melbourne, they called their ex-colleagues 
together, and advised the Queen to send the following 
note to Sir Eobert Peel, which she did : — 

Buckingliam Palace, May 10, 1839. 

The Queen, Laving considered the proposal made to her yester- 
day by Sir Robert Peel, to remove the Ladies of her Bedchamber, 
cannot consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to 
usage and repugnant to her feelings. 

On receipt of this, Sir Pobert Peel, acting in perfect 
concert with the Duke of Wellington, communicated 
with Her Majesty in a remarkably courteous letter, of 
which this was the concluding and decisive paragraph : — 

Having had the opportunity, through your Majesty's gracious 
consideration, of reflecting upon this point, he humbly submits to 
your Majesty that he is reluctantly compelled, by a sense of public 
duty and of the interest of your Majesty's service, to adhere to the 
opinion which he ventured to express to your Majesty. He trusts he 
may be permitted, at the same time, to express to your Majesty his 
grateful acknowledgments for the distinction which your Majesty con- 
ferred upon him, by requiring his advice and assistance in the attempt 
to form an Administration, and his earnest prayers that whatever 
arrangements your Majesty may be enabled to make for that purpose, 
may be most conducive to your Majesty's personal comfort and hap- 
piness, and to the promotion of the public welfare. 

It was generally believed at the time, as Sir Archi- 
bald Alison himself confesses, that Peel did not regret 
this royal rebuff; for "he was by no means sanguine," 



WELLINGTON AND LOrvD MELBOURNE. 89 

says the Tory historiograplier, "as to the success of his 
mission, nor annoyed at tlie failure of the attempt to 
fulfil it." The pro and con were put with equal terse- 
ness and skill by Lord Melbourne and the Duke of 
Wellington. The words of the latter were : — " It is 
essential that the Minister should possess the entire 
confidence of Her Majesty, and with that view should 
exercise the usual control permitted to the Minister by 
the Sovereign in the construction of the Household. 
There is the greatest possible difierence between the 
Souseliold of the Queen Consort and the Household of 
the Queen Regnant — that of the former, who is not 
a political personage, beiug comparatively of little im- 
portance." 

Lord Melbourne, on the other hand, thus justified the 
advice which his Koyal Mistress had received from him 
and adopted : — "I frankly declare that I resume oflice 
unequivocally and solely for this reason, that I will not 
abandon my Sovereign in a situation of difficulty and 
distress, and especially when a demand is made upon Her 
Majesty with which, I think, she ought not to comply — 
a demand inconsistent with her personal honour, and 
which, if acquiesced in, would render her reign liable to 
all the changes and variations of political parties, and 
render her domestic life one constant scene of un- 
happiness and discomfort." 

The public at large, even those who thought her action 
wrong, accorded to the Queen sympatliy rather than 
blame. It was well known that she had been dexterously 
surrounded by the wives and sisters and daughters of 
the great Whigs, and that on these ladies all her ardent 
and girlish afi'ections were bestowed. This made the 



90 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

people all the more angry tliat the male heads of the 
Whig houses now gave her unconstitutional advice. Not 
only her youth and inexperience, but the very warmth of 
the affection which she had displayed, and, above all, the 
fact that she was the chief sufferer on the occasion, all 
pleaded for her. Indeed, it may be said that the quickly- 
forgotten "Bedchamber Plot" rather endeared the Sove- 
reign to her subjects than otherwise. Both of her uncles 
who preceded her on the throne had been exceedingly 
capricious and disloyal to their ministers. Under these 
reigns there was a constant sense, in the breasts of 
ministers and in the breasts of the people, of the pre- 
cariousness of the existence of even the most popular 
cabinets. It certainly cannot be said that in the early 
summer of 1839 Lord Melbourne's cabinet was popular. 
IsTevertheless, though the ministers were blamed, the 
people were charmed by the Queen's ingenuousness, 
bravery, and steadiness of attachment. It is but just to • 
state that on every future occasion of the change of an 
Administration, the Queen has, without the slightest 
demur, conceded the point, the consideration of which we 
now dismiss. And with the transparent candour of her 
nature. Her Majesty has caused it to be made known that 
the Prince Consort had much to do with producing this 
result. 



CHAPTER XII. 

COURTSHIP AND BETROTHAL. 

Desire of the Coburg Eelatives for a Marriage between Victoria and 
Albert — Favourable Impressions mutually made by Victoria and 
Albert — Prince Albert's Letter on the Queen's Accession — OjDpo- 
sition of King William IV. to tbe Marriage — Correspondence 
between the Cousins — King Leopold urges on the Marriage — 
The Queen's Reluctance to become Betrothed — Her subsequent 
Regret at this — Tlie Prince craves a definite Determination — 
His Second Visit to England — Betrothed at last — Returns to 
Germany to say Farewell, 

We have already seen that the marriage of Prince Albert 
with his cousin was strongly desired by their common 
relatives from a very early period of their lives. It 
was the " ardent wish " of their grandmother, and she 
freely communicated that wish to her son and daughter, 
Prince Leopold and the Duchess of Kent. There are 
strong indications that the astute King Leopold never 
lost sight of this end from the date of his mother's death 
in 1831. Soon after the visit of the brothers to their 
"aunt Kent" in 1836, the rumour began to prevail 
in England that Prince Albert was the fiance of the 
future Queen. The idea, however, was premature. So 
we know on the Queen's authority, who has caused it to 
be stated that " nothing w^as then settled." 

In the letters which the Prince sent to his father and 
others, during his stay at Brussels and elsewhere, 



92 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

immediately after his first visit to England, lie made 
frequent reference to tlie general impressions thence 
derived, and especially to his young cousin. Of such 
allusions, this is a fair specimen : — " A few days ago I 
received a letter from aunt Kent, enclosing one from our 
cousin. She told me I was to communicate its contents 
to you, so I send it on with a translation of the English. 
The day before yesterday I received a second and yet 
kinder letter from my cousin, in which she thanks me for 
my good wishes on her birth-day. You may easily 
imagine that both these letters gave me great pleasure." 
And when the news of the death of King William and 
the accession of Victoria arrived, he informed his father, 
on the authority of his uncle Leopold, that the new 
reign had commenced most successfully (this, perhaps, 
in allusion to the anticipated attempt at a coup d'etat 
by the Duke of Cumberland), that his cousin Victoria 
had shown astonishing self-possession, although English 
parties were violently excited, and that the Duchess 
of Kent had found strenuous support against "violent 
attacks in the newspapers." This last statement we 
have, however, good reasons for saying had reached 
the young Prince in a somewhat exaggerated form ; we 
mean, so far as the " violence " of the attacks was con- 
cerned. 

To the Queen herself the Prince wrote a letter, con- 
solatory in her bereavement, and congratulatory on her 
accession. This was the first letter which he sent her 
written in English. He prayed Heaven to assist her 
now that she was "Queen of the mightiest land in 
Europe," with the happiness of millions in her hand, 
and asked her "to think sometimes of her cousins 



EUMOURS ABOUT MAERIAGE. 93 

in Bonn [where they were then pursuing their University 
studies], and to continue that kindness you favoured them 
with till now." 

On the accession of the Queen, the rumour of her 
marriage with Prince Albert became ten times more 
prevalent. The judicious King Leopold thought it wise, 
for a time at least, to discourage this expectation, and 
to withdraw the attention of the English from the Prince. 
Hence it was that he counselled those journeys into 
Austria, South Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, in 
which we have already traced the steps of the Prince. 
This was chiefly dictated by the distracted state of parties 
in England, which the King of the Belgians thought it 
better to permit time to allay ere the matrimonial project 
was brought specifically forward, " United as all parties 
are," wrote Prince Albert to his father, from the in- 
spiration of his uncle, " in high praise of the young 
Queen, the more do they seem to manceuvre and intrigue 
with and against each other. On every side there is 
nothing but a network of cabals and intrigues, and parties 
are arrayed against each other in a most inexplicable 
manner." 

Whilst making his " grand tour," the Prince kept up 
an occasional correspondence with his cousin. Prom 
Switzerland he sent her an album of the places which he 
visited, from the top of the Pigi a dried Alpine rose, 
and from Ferney an autographic scrap of Yoltair^ 
which he received from an old servant of the great 
philosopher. 

By the early part of 1839, the tour was concluded, 
and we find the Prince once more at Brussels with his 
uncle. Leopold now spoke to him more fully and de- 



94 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTOKIA. 

finitely tlian he had hitherto done about his prospects in 
life and the state of his affections. It very clearly appears 
that the marriage with the Queen had been gradually 
becoming more and more an understood thing. It 
appears equally clear that the Queen was averse, as 
yet, to committing herself to a distinct and final en- 
gagement. She was willing to marry, but wished to 
defer the contraction of the union. She thought both 
lierself and her cousin too young ; and the interests of her 
people, rather than any personal backwardness, influenced 
her wish that both she and her husband should be older 
ere they became man and wife. She regretted after- 
wards this delay, and felt that the harassments of the 
Bedchamber Plot and other still more painful incidents 
which we have thought it preferable not to rake up and 
reproduce in these pages, would have been borne by her 
with more equanimity had she had the natural pro- 
tection of a husband six months or a year ere the date 
of her marriage. It was probably this postponement of 
any definite settlement that occasioned Prince Albert's 
absence from England at the Coronation, in June, 1838. 
His father was invited, and received at the hands of 
his niece the honour of the Order of the Garter. The 
Dowager Duchess of Gotha was very proud of this, and 
proud also to recollect that her son-in-law possessed the 
noblest knightly order of Christendom, which her own 
father of Hesse-Casse], and her father-in-law of Gotha, 
had also worn and treasured. 

In more than one quarter the marriage, which all 
members of the Coburg family felt to be so eligible, 
and in which their feelings were so much involved, met 
with a considerable amount of opposition. By a curious 



OBJECTIONS TO THE MARHIAGE. 95 

coincidence, a Prince of Orange had been the suitor 
favoured by George TV. for tlie hand of his daughter j 
but she selected the man of her own choice — Leopold, a 
Coburg Prince. And a Prince of Orange (nephew of the 
rejected aspirant to the hand of the Princess Charlotte) 
was the man thought by William IV., as long as he 
lived, to be the best future husband of his niece and 
successor; and his niece, too, selected, like her cousin 
Charlotte, as the man of her choice, a Prince of the 
House of Coburg. King William did all in his power 
to discourage the attachment between Victoria and 
Albert He was so strongly set against this match that 
he did all that he could even to prevent Prince Albert's 
visit to England in 1836; and although he never spoke 
to his young niece on the subject himself, she afterwards 
learned that he had devised no fewer than five matri- 
monial alternatives for her selection — that of the late 
Prince Alexander of the Netherlands always having 
the preference and priority. In justice to the memory 
of King William it must, however, be stated that the 
Dowager Queen Adelaide afterwards told her niece that 
her uncle would never have striven to control or re- 
strain her afiections if he had had any idea that they 
had been strongly bestowed in any particular quarter. 

It was in the early part of 1839, that King Leopold 
first wrote seriously to his niece on the subject — about 
the same time that we have seen that he made a similar 
verbal communication to his nephew. He received a 
favourable response from both, but with this difference, 
that the lady craved an indefinite delay. This idea 
of delay the Prince dealt with in a very honest and 
manly manner. He had, he said, no objections to post- 



06 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

ponement ; but, nevertheless, thought he had a fair right, 
if he were to keep himself free, and thereby be com- 
pelled to decline any other career or line of life which 
might open itself out to him, to have some definite 
assurance or understanding that the engagement would 
be without doubt contracted. This concession, however, 
the equally natural bashfulness of the Queen would 
not suffer her to make. However, all came right 
in the end, and the Queen has very candidly con- 
fessed in her riper years, that if she had known as 
a girl what she afterwards learned as a woman, that 
she even seemed to be playing with her somewhat un- 
demonstrative but not the less devoted lover, she would 
not have exacted the semi-sacrifice which the Prince's 
self-respect caused him to feel uneasy at, but to which 
the true courtesy of his nature induced him to submit. 
He did wait till 1839, but the Queen afterwards learned 
that he came to England in that year prepared to de- 
clare that, in the case of further postponement, he must 
decline to consider himself bound in any way for the 
future. 

In October, 1839, Prince Albert, with his brother, 
set out from Brussels to England, to urge his final suit. 
Ere leaving Germany, he had spent a very pleasant time 
with his cousin. Count Albert Mensdorflf, who was doing 
military duty with the garrison of Mayence. They then 
made a short journey together, in the course of which 
the one cousin confided the great secret to the other. 
"During our journey," writes the Count, "Albert con- 
fided to me, under the seal of the strictest confidence, 
that he was going to England to make your acquaintance, 
and that if you liked each other you were to be engaged. 



FIRST MEETING WITH PHINCE ALBERT. 97 

He spoke very seriously about the difficulties of the 
position he would have to occupy in England, but hoped 
that dear uncle Leopold would assist him with his advice." 
The Princes — Albert bearing with him a shrewd and 
significant letter to the Queen from King Leopold — 
arrived at "Windsor on the 10th of October, where they 
were cordially received by their cousin and aunt. The 
Queen was much struck with the greatly improved 
appearance of the Prince, in the interval of three years 
since she had last seen him. Gay and festive entertain- 
ments had been arranged in their honour immediately 
upon their arrival. The Queen became more and more 
charmed with her cousin, and within a week after his 
arrival, she informed her Premier, Lord Melbourne, that 
she had made up her mind to the marriage. In reply, 
he indicated his own perfect satisfaction, and added 
that the nation was getting anxious that its sovereign 
should be married ; and then he said, in a kindly way, 
"You will be much more comfortable; for a woman 
cannot stand alone for any time, in whatever position 
she may be." 

The following we present, without professing either to 
confirm or question its accuracy, but simply as being the 
commonly-received report, at the time, of the manner in 
which the engagement was finally efiected between the 
parties directly interested : — 

The Prince, in his turn, played the part of a royal lover with all 
the grace peculiar to his house. He never willingly absented him- 
self from the Queen's society and presence, and her every wish was 
anticipated Avith the alacrity of an unfeigned attachment. At length 
Her Majesty, having wholly made up her mind as to the issue of this 
visit, found herself in some measure embarrassed as to the fit and 
proper means of indicating her preference to the Prince. This was 

K 



98 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

a perplexing task^ but the Queen acquitted herself of it with equal 
delicacy and tact. At one of the Palace halls she took occasion to 
present her bouquet to the Prince at the conclusion of a dauce, and the 
hint was not lost upon the polite and gallant German, His close 
uniform, buttoned up to the throat, did not admit of his placing the 
Persian-like gift where it would be most honoured ; so he immediately 
drew his penknife and cut a slit in his dress in the neighbourhood of 
his heart, where he gracefully deposited the happy omen. Again, to 
announce to the Privy Council her intended union was an easy duty 
in comparison to that of intimating her wishes to the principal party 
concerned ; and here, too, it is said that our Sovereign Lady displayed 
unusual presence of mind and female ingenuity. The Prince was 
expressing the grateful sense which he entertained of his reception in 
England, and the delight which he experienced during his stay from 
the kind .attentions of royalty, when the Queen, very naturally and 
very pointedly, put to him the question upon which their future fates 
depended : '' If, indeed, your Plighness is so much pleased with this 
country, perhaps you Avould not object to remaining in it, and making 
it your home ? " Ko one can doubt the reply. 

The day after tlie Queen's communication to her 
Premier, she caused an intimation to be conveyed to her 
lover that she desired to see him in private. The Prince 
at once v/aited upon her, and after a few minutes' 
general conversation, the Queen told him why she had 
sent for him, and modestly but plainly said that she was 
quite willing now to undertake the bond of betrothal. 
Of course, there was only one possible response, and the 
Prince joyously wrote the next day to his trusty friend 
and tried counsellor, Baron Stockmar, " on one of the 
happiest days of his life, to give him the most welcome 
news/' The betrothal was at once communicated to 
Prince Ernest, to King Leopold, and to the Duke of 
Coburg. From these and other relatives to whom the 
news, as yet to be kept a family secret, was sent, the 
warmest felicitations quickly poured in. Leopold wrote, 



THE BETROTHAL. 99 

commending Albert in the highest terms, and emphati- 
cally congratulating Yictoria on having secured an un- 
mistakably good husband, concludiug with the prayer, 
" May Albert be able to strew roses without thorns on 
the pathway of life of our good Yictoria !" 

The Queen had intended to make her first formal 
announcement of her intended marriage to her Parlia- 
ment; but on second thoughts, she altered her resolve, 
and selected her Privy Council as the first official 
recipients of the tidings. Of course, the Ministers had 
been already confidentially informed of the Queen's 
purpose,- and they strongly counselled an early union, 
and both Queen and Prince acquiesced in the proposal. 
After happy and rapturous days of undoubted and now 
freely-acknowledged attachment, the Princes returned to 
Germany, on the 14 th of November, after a visit lasting 
just five weeks ; Ernest to return to his military duties, 
Albert to say farewell to friends and fatherland, ere 
finally returning to the region of his new life and love. 



H 2 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE QUEEN WEDDED. 

Announcement of tlie intended Marriage to tlie Privy Conncil and 
Parliament — Parliamentary Settlement of the Prince's Rank, &c. 
■^Annoying Circumstances — The Prince's Protestantism — His 
Income — Arrival of the Bridegroom — Receives a National Welcome 
—The Wedding — Honeymoon spent at Windsor. 

On the day after the departure of the Princes, the Queen 
wrote letters to the Queen Dowager, and the other 
members of the Eoyal Family, informing them of her 
intended marriage, and received kind letters in return 
from all. A few days later she and her mother came 
from Windsor to Buckingham Palace, where Lord 
Melbourne submitted the draft of the proposed De- 
claration to the Privy Council. His Lordship told the 
Queen that the Cabinet had unanimously agreed that 
£50,000 would be an appropriate annual allowance for 
the Prince, and that they anticipated no Parliamentary 
opposition to that amount. He also stated that there 
had been a stupid attempt to make it out that he was a 
Homan Catholic, and that "he was afraid to say any- 
thing about his religion," and accordingly had not 
touched upon it in the Declaration. This turned out, 
as we shall see, a very unwise omission j it actually gave 
colour and consistency to the absurd report. 

On the 23rd of November, eighty- three members of 
the Privy Council met in Buckingham Palace. Precisely 



ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE BETROTHAL. 101 

at two the Queen entered. She evinced much natural 
agitation, but was considerably reassured by a kindly and 
paternal look from her staunch friend, Lord Melbourne ; 
whereupon she read the Declaration, which ran thus : — 

I have caused you to be summoned at the present time in order 
that I may acquaint you with my resolution in a matter which deeply 
concerns the welfare of my people, and the happiness of my future life. 
It is my intention to ally myself in marriage with the Prince Albert of 
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Deeply impressed with the solemnity of the 
engagement which I am about to contract, I have not come to this 
decision without mature consideration, nor without feeling a strong 
assurance that, with the blessing of Almighty God, it will at once 
secure my domestic felicity and serve the interests of my coxmtry. I 
have thought fit to make this resolution known to you at the earliest 
period, in order that you may be apprised of a matter so highly 
important to me and to my kingdom, and which, I persuade myself, 
will be most acceptable to all my loving subjects. 

The moment the Queen had read the Declaration, 
Lord Lansdowne rose and asked, in the name of the 
Council, that "this most gracious and most welcome 
communication might be printed." Leave was granted, 
and Her Majesty left the room, the whole ceremony 
having occupied only two or three minutes. The Duke 
of Cambridge followed his niece into the ante-room, and 
warmly congratulated her. The Declaration appeared 
in the next Gazette, whence it was copied into all the 
newspapers, and was joyfully read and received over the 
whole land. 

There were now important questions to be settled, in 
Parliament, in the Council, and by the exercise of the 
Royal prerogative, as to the future rank and station of the 
Prince. Such were — Should he be made a peer 1 as had 
been the last consort of an English Queen, Prince George 
of Denmark; the husband of Queen Anne, of whom the 



102 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

only good thing that can be said is, that he accidentally 
made Arbuthnot, Pope's great friend and fellow-labourer, 
his Court physician. The idea of being made a peer 
was strenuously, sensibly, and successfully resisted by 
the Prince. Then there were the practical questions of 
his naturalisation, the selection of his Household, his posi- 
tion in the scale of precedence, and his income. So far as 
the Prince legitimately could and did meddle with the 
solution of these knotty points, he showed, when neces- 
sary, great sagacity, and a firmness very wondrous in one 
so young. From the very moment of his betrothal, he 
regarded himself as the custodian and guardian of his 
future wife's, rather than his own, independent position 
and unfettered dignity. It was not himself, but the hus- 
band of the Queen on behalf of whom he took a firm 
line. 

The Queen wished to give her husband precedence 
next after herself. Some difficulty was experienced in 
procuring the consent of the Koyal Dukes, but at last 
their scruples were removed. Only the King of Hanover 
stubbornly held out, and the Duke of Wellington, in the 
House of Peers, declined on behalf of his party to con- 
sent. The proposal was, therefore, withdrawn from 
Parliament, but shortly after the Queen conferred a patent 
of precedence by the exercise of her own prerogative. On 
a similar matter of dispute, it was not until the Prince 
himself had pointed out the unaccountably overlooked pre- 
cedent of the privilege as enjoyed by Prince Leopold in the 
life-time of the Princess Charlotte, that Garter King-at- 
Arms could be induced to withdraw his opinion adverse 
to Prince Albert quartering the Poyal Arms of England 
with his own. 



ANNOUNCEMENT TO PARLIAMENT. 103 

In tlie matter of liis Household, tlie Prince's own 
admirable judgment solved the difficulty -with the clear 
adroitness of honest simplicity. He stipulated that con- 
siderations of party should have nothing to do with these 
appointments ; that they should be filled by men of un- 
doubted probity and purity of character ; and he indicated 
his decided ^dsh that they should be men of some kind of 
eminence ; either very rich, very clever, or men who had 
deserved well of their country in the field of science or 
of arms. These wishes, to the Prince's considerable 
annoyance, were not all closely followed out. 

The Queen was tremendously cheered when, in January, 
1840, she went to open Parliament, and no doubt was left in 
her mind as to the thorough popularity of the proposed 
union. The announcement of her intention contained in 
the Speech was a virtual rejoetition of that already made 
to the Council. From both sides of both Houses she w^as 
personally congratulated, and her choice approved, but 
the Duke of Wellington strongly objected to the omission 
of the statement that the Prince was a Protestant, with 
some shrewdness attributing its absence to Melbourne's 
reluctance to irritate his Irish Catholic supporters. The 
Duke at the same time repeated again and again his 
own perfect personal conviction in the thorough fidelity 
of the Prince to the historic and heroic Protestantism of 
his race. Lord Brougham spoke on this point, and very 
pertinently : " I may remark," he said, " that my noble 
friend (Lord Melbourne) is mistaken as to the law. There 
is no prohibition as to marriage with a Catholic. It is 
only attended with a penalty, and that penalty is merely 
the forfeiture of the Grown.'' In spite of this, a sentence 
asserting the fact of the Prince's Protestantism was, 



104 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

at the Duke of Wellington's instance, inserted in the 
Address agreed to in answer to the Speech from the 
Throne. 

There remained only the question of the Prince's 
annuity. Ministers proposed £50,000. A very large 
majority negatived a proposal by Mr. Hume to reduce it 
to £20,000. But the Tory leaders supported a proposal 
of Colonel Sibthorpe's to reduce it to £30,000, and by a 
considerable majority this was carried. The Queen, and 
her uncle Leopold, were extremely angry at the time at 
what they conceived to be the personal slight conveyed in 
this fact. But the Queen, under the wise and placable 
guidance of the Prince, afterwards learned to attribute it. 
to the then heat of party rancour, still unallayed after 
the Bedchamber dispute ; and the Prince at an early 
period of his residence in England contracted warm and 
abiding friendships with many of the men who had most 
strongly resisted Ministers on each of the above contested 
points. 

On the 28th of January, Prince Albert, accompanied 
by Lord Torrington and Colonel (now General) Grey, who 
had been sent to invest him with the insignia of the 
Garter and conduct him in due state to England, set out 
from Gotha, as we have already seen at a previous page. 
He was also accompanied by his father and brother. After 
a passing visit to King Leopold at Brussels, they were 
met at Calais by Lord Clarence Paget, who commanded 
the Firebrand, and escorted the distinguished visitors to 
the shores of England, at which they arrived on the 6 th 
of February. After magnificent and most hearty recep- 
tions at Dover and Canterbury, they reached Buckingham 
Palace in the afternoon of Saturday, the 8th of February, 



THE WEDDING. 105 

where tlie Prince found his bride standing with her 
mother at the door, ready to be the first to meet and to 
greet him. Half an hour later, the Lord Chancellor 
administered the oath of naturalisation, and the Prince 
became a subject of Queen Victoria. A grand dinner to 
the Prince, the Ministers, and the great officers of State 
succeeded in the evening. The next day the Prince 
drove out, amid the cheers of immense crowds, to pay 
formal visits to all the members of the Royal Family. 

Monday, the 10th, was the day appointed for the 
wedding, which was magnificently celebrated in the 
Chapel Poyal of St. James's Palace. On the morning of 
that day a larger crowd assembled in St. James's Park 
and its approaches than had been collected together in 
the metropolis since the rejoicings at the visit of the 
Allied Sovereigns in 1814. Not even the extreme in- 
clemency of the weather abated either the patience or 
enthusiasm of the multitude. After the ladies and gentle- 
men of the Households of the Queen and the Prince had 
been driven along the Mall from the palace of residence 
to the palace of state, and the carriages which conveyed 
them had returned, the bridegroom was notified that all 
was in readiness for his departure. He set out, dressed 
as a British field-marshal, and with all the insignia of the 
Garter, the jewels of which had been a personal present 
from the Queen, having on one side his father and on the 
other his brother, both in military uniforms. He entered 
his carriage amid tremendous cheers, and the enthusiastic 
waving of handkerchiefs by a bevy of ladies privileged to 
stand in the grand lobbies of the palace, and was escorted 
to the chapel by a squadron of the Life Guards. On the 
return of the carriages which carried the Prince and his 



106 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

company, Her Majesty was in turn apprised that all was 
in readiness for her departure. She, too, was enthusiasti- 
cally received, "but her eye was bent principally upon 
the ground." In the same carriage with the Queen rode 
the Duchesses of Kent and Sutherland. It was noticed 
as she drove along that she was extremely pale, and 
looked very anxious, though two or three incidents in the 
crowd caused her to smile. 

On her arrival at her palace of St. James's, the Queen 
was conducted to the Presence Chamber, where she 
remained with her maids-of-honour and trainbearers, 
awaiting the Lord Chamberlain's summons to the altar. 
Meanwhile, the colonnade within the palace, along which 
the bridal procession had to pass and repass, had been 
filled since early morn by the 61ite of England's rank and 
beauty. Each side of the way was a parterre of white 
robes, white relieved with blue, white and green, amber, 
crimson, purple, fawn, and stone colour. All wore wed- 
ding favours of lace, orange-flower blossoms, or silver 
bullion, some of great size, and many in most exquisite 
taste. Most of the gentlemen were in court dress ; and 
the scene during the patient hours of waiting was made 
picturesque by the passing to and fro in various garbs 
of burly yeomen of the guard, armed with their massive 
halberts, slight-built gentlemen-at-arms, with partisans 
of equal slightness ; elderly pages of state, and pretty 
pages of honour ; officers of the Lord Chamberlain, and 
officers of the Woods and Forests j heralds all em- 
broidery, and cuirassiers in polished steel j prelates in 
their rochets, and priests in their stoles, and singing boys 
in their surplices of virgin white. 

Within the chapel, in which the altar was magnifi- 



THE BRIDESMAIDS. 107 

centlj decorated and laden with a profusion of gold plate, 
four state chairs were set, varying in splendour according 
to the rank of the destined occupants, respectively for 
Her Majesty, Prince Albert, the Queen Dowager, and 
the Duchess of Kent.' The Archbishops of Canterbury 
and York, and the Bishop of London, having taken 
their places within the altar-rails, a flourish of trumpets 
announced the procession of the bridegroom. As the 
Prince passed along, the gentlemen greeted him with loud 
clapping of the hands, and the ladies waved their hand- 
kerchiefs with at least equal enthusiasm. 

In a few minutes the procession of the bride was 
announced by trumpets and drums. It was of six or 
seven times the numerical strength of the bridegroom's, 
and the beauty of the twelve bridesmaids, all daughters of 
peers of the three highest grades, was specially commended. 
The Duchess of Cambridge led by the hand her then 
child-daughter, the Princess Mary, "and the mother of 
so beautiful a child was certainly not to be seen without 
much interest." The Duchess of Kent appeared " dis- 
consolate and distressed ; " while the Duke of Sussex, 
who was to give away the bride, was "in excellent 
spirits." The Queen herself looked "anxious and ex- 
cited, and paler even than usual." She was dressed in a 
rich white satin, trimmed with orange-flower blossoms. 
She wore a wreath of the same, over which was a veil of 
rich Honiton lace, worn so as not to conceal her face. 
She wore as jewels the Collar of the Order of the 
Garter, with a diamond necklace and earrings. The 
bridesmaids were the Ladies Adelaide Paget, Sarah 
Villiers, Frances Cowper, Elizabeth West, Mary Grim- 
ston, Eleanor Paget, Caroline Lennox, Elizabeth Howard, 



108 LIFE or QtJEEK VICTOKIA. 

Ida Hay, Catherine Stanhope, Jane Bouverie, and Mary 
Howard. 

After the conclusion of the marriage rite, the Queen 
hastily crossed to the opposite side of the altar, and kissed 
the Queen Dowager, who was standing there. She then 
took Prince Albert's hand, and passed down the aisle. 
On the return to Buckingham Palace, it was observed 
that the Prince, still retaining the Queen's hand in his 
own, whether by accident or design, held it in such a 
way as to display the wedding-ring, which was more 
solid than is usual in ordinary weddings. "When the 
Queen had been led into the palace by her husband, it 
was observed that her morning paleness had entirely 
passed off, and that she entered her own halls with an 
open, joyous, and slightly flushed countenance. 

After the wedding breakfast the young couple de- 
parted, at a quarter before four, for Windsor, amid the 
cheers of the undiminished multitude. Her Majesty's 
travelling dress was a white satin pelisse, trimmed with 
swansdown, with a white satin bonnet and feather. As 
the cortege passed rapidly up Constitution Hill_, the 
Queen bowed in return to the cheers of her applauding 
subjects with much earnestness of manner. When the 
Queen and Prince arrived at Windsor, they found the 
whole town illuminated, and received a rapturous wel- 
come from the citizens and the Eton boys, all wearing 
favours. 

We shall conclude this chapter, which we shall not 
desecrate by devoting to any other deity than Hymen, by 
a brief description of the Queen's wedding-cake, which, 
fortunately for our enterprise, we have succeeded in 
disinterring from the contemporary records. It was 



THE WEDDING-CAKE. 109 

described by aa eye-witness as consisting of all the most 
exquisite compounds of all the rich things with which 
the most expensive cakes can be composed, mingled and 
mixed together with delightful harmony by the most 
elaborate science of the confectioner. It weighed 300 
pounds, was three yards in circumference, and fourteen 
inches in depth. On the top was a device of Britannia 
blessing the bride and bridegroom, who were dressed, 
somewhat incongruously, in the costume of ancient Kome. 
At the foot of the bridegroom was the figure of a dog, 
intended to denote fidelity ; at the feet of the Queen a 
pair of turtle-doves. A host of gamboling Cupids, one of 
them registering the marriage in a book, and bouquets 
of white flowers tied with true-lovers' knots, completed 
the decorations. 



CHAPTER XIY. 

EARLY YEARS OF MARRIED LIFE. 

Difficulties and Delicacy of Prince Albert's Position — Early Married 
Life — Studies continued — Attempts on the Queen's Life — 
Courage of the Queen — Birth of the Princess Eoyal — Parting 
from the Whig Ladies of the Bedchamber — Dark Days for England 
— Birth of the Prince of Wales— The Queen described by M. 
Guizot — A Dinner at Buckingham Palace — State Dinner at 
Windsor. 

The Queen was now married to tlie husband of her 
choice. "It is that," said Lord Melbourne to her, 
" which makes your Majesty's marriage so popular, as 
they know it is not for state reasons." A few months 
after the wedding-day, the Prince wrote to an old 
college associate — "I am very happy and contented." 
After the wedding, the young couple stayed for four 
days at "Windsor, reading, riding, walking together, and 
giving small dinner parties in the evening. They then 
returned to Buckingham Palace, where a large crowd 
had collected to welcome them, and fairly commenced 
the common duties of their married life. At first it 
would appear that jealousies, in quarters which need 
not be specified, prevented the Prince taking his proper 
position as the head of his home and household. He 
wrote to his friend. Prince Lowenstein, in May, 1840 — 
" I am only the husband, not the master in the house." 
But the common sense of the Queen, and the dignity of 
the Prince, soon set this matter to rights. When urged 



EARLY MARRIED DAYS. Ill 

that she, as being Sovereign, must be the head of the 
house, she quietly rejoined that she had sworn to obey, 
as well as love and honour, her husband, and that she 
was determined to keep all her bridal troth. She com- 
municated all foreign despatches to him, and frequently 
he made annotations on them, which were communicated 
to the Minister whose department they affected. He had 
often the satisfaction of discovering that the Minister, 
though he might say nothing on the subject, nevertheless 
acted upon his suggestions. His correspondence to 
Germany soon bore a very different tone and complexion. 
To use his own words, and slightly expand them, he " en- 
deavoured to be of as much use to Victoria as possible." 
The Queen now, having received the approval of the 
Duke of Wellington, whom she consulted as a con- 
fidential friend, for the first time put her husband in his 
proper place, by giving him, by E-oyal Letters Patent, 
to which Parliamentary sanction is not required, rank 
and precedence next to herself, except in Parliament and 
the Privy Council. 

Frequent levees, and "dinners followed by little 
dances," formed the chief amusements of the young 
couple in the earliest stage of their married life. They 
went much, too, to the play, both having an especial 
relish for and admiration of Shakespeare. The Queen, 
although now a married woman, by no means neglected 
useful or solacing and refining studies. She took singing 
lessons from Lablache, and frequently sang and played 
with the Prince, sometimes using the piano, sometimes 
the organ as accompaniment. They went to Claremont, 
the Queen's favourite youthful haunt, to celebrate her 
birthday, and continued to do so, even after the purchase 



112 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

of Osborne, until 1848, when Claremont was given as a 
residence to the ex-Queen of the French. Both Queen 
and Prince were extremely glad to get away from the 
smoke and grime of London. In fact, these constituted 
a peculiar source of physical oppression to both; and 
they were always glad to retire to the rural quiet and 
seclusion of Claremont. 

The first alarming incident of the Queen's wedded 
life occurred on the 10th of June, 1840. In her first 
early days of maiden queenhood, she had been annoyed 
by madmen wanting to marry her. On more than one 
occasion her saddle-horse was attempted to be stopped in 
the Park by one of such maniacs, as she was attended 
by an equerry ; and in two instances similar attempts 
were made by innocent lunatics to force their way into 
Windsor Castle, in each case armed with nothing more 
deadly than a proposal of marriage. But what we are 
about to narrate was a much more serious matter. There 
is no denying the fact, that, after the first two years of 
her reign, the Queen was, for a time, by no means so 
popular as she had been. Her ministers were eminently 
unpopular, and to no slight extent she shared their un- 
popularity. Appalling distress prevailed, and Chartism 
and other more dangerous forms of sedition were rife. 
The poor asked how so much money could be spent on 
the Queen's hospitable entertainments, while they were 
starving; and inquired how it was that the name of 
Lord Melbourne, who should be supposed to ha,ve work 
enough to do looking after the aftairs of the distressed 
nation, should appear in the newspapers almost every 
day as attending some of Her Majesty's banquets. Occa- 
sionally during the summer she was received in public 



THE QUEEN SHOT AT. 113 

in silence, and once or twice, in theatres and elsewhere, 
disagreeable cries were heard. More than once during 
this and one or two succeeding years, pistol-shots were 
fired at her. We select one, and the first attack upon 
her, as a type of the others. A youth named Oxford, 
some seventeen or eighteen years of age, either a fool or 
a madman, fired two pistol-shots at her, as she and her 
husband were driving in a phaeton up Constitution Hill. 
He was at once arrested, and it being impossible to 
assign any conceivable cause for the act, he was declared 
insane, and doomed to incarceration for life. Neither the 
Queen nor the Prince were injured, and both showed the 
utmost self-possession. 

Perhaps the best proof of her bravery on the occasion 
of this outrage, as it was an unquestionable proof of her 
tenderness of heart, was the fact that within a minute or 
two after the shot of Oxford had been fired, she had the 
horses' heads turned towards her mother's house, that 
her mother should see her sound and uninjured, ere an 
exaggerated or indiscreetly communicated report of the 
occuiTence coidd reach her. Immediately after, she drove 
to Hyde Park, whither she had been proceeding before 
the outrage occurred, to take her usual drive before 
dinner. An immense concourse of persons of all ranks 
and both sexes had assembled, and the enthusiasm of her 
reception almost overpowered her. Prince Albert's face, 
alternately pale and flushed, betrayed the strength of his 
emotions. They returned to Buckingham Palace attended 
by a most magnificent escort of the rank and beauty of 
London, on horseback and in carriages. A great crowd 
of a humbler sort was at the Palace gates to greet her, 
and it was said that she did not lose her composure 

X 



114 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

until a flood of tears relieved her pent-up excitement in 
her own cliamber. " God save the Queen" was demanded 
at all the theatres in the evening, and in the immediately 
succeeding days the Queen received^ seated on her throne, 
loyal and congratulatory addresses from the Peers in 
their robes, and wearing all their decorations ; from the 
Commons, from the City Corporation, and many other 
public bodies. 

Oxford was incarcerated in Bethlehem Hospital, one 
of the great metropolitan lunatic asylums, in which he 
remained many years^ and of which he was made one of 
the chief " sights " by its visitors. Perhaps it was this 
circumstance that induced the authorities to order his 
removal to Broadmoor, the state prison in which persons 
charged with felonious crimes, whose lunacy has been 
established, have within recent years been confined. 
There he remained until the commencement of the winter 
months of 1867. During all the weary period which 
intervened between the perpetration of his offence and 
that date his conduct was exemplary, and no evidence of 
mental aberration appeared. At various times appeals 
were made in his behalf by influential persons who had 
the oj)portunity of watching his demeanour and judging 
his character. Plis own representation from first to last 
ever was that the pistol which he fired was not loaded. 
He attributed the act which so nearly cost him his life 
and which wasted the best years of his existence, to in- 
ordinate vanity, fostered by a variety of trivial circum- 
stances in his domestic life, on which it is not necessary to 
dwell, and which led to a senseless desire — similar to that 
which has perpetuated the name of Erostratus, the in- 
cendiary who fired the Temple of Diana at Ephesus — to 



BIRTH OF THE PRINCESS EOTAL. 115 

gain notoriety by wliatever means. To a certain extent 
he educated himself during his confinement, and became 
a tolerable linguist. He also taught himself that branch 
of the house-painter's trade termed "graining," sufficiently 
well to enable him to earn a decent livelihood. At last, 
late in 1867, he received a free pardon and release, subject 
only to the very proper provision that he should expatriate 
himself and never return to British shores. The same 
mania, or silly senselessness, might break out again, and 
it is manifestly right that the person of the Sovereign 
should be protected from the vanity of a man who, at 
however distant a period, could commit the cowardly 
outrage of which he was the author. 

When, a year or two later, the Queen was again 
providentially saved from similar felonious attempts, their 
character being of the same nature as that of Oxford's, a 
strong feeling animated the general public mind that some 
special deterrent should be devised to prevent or reduce 
the likelihood of such maniacal or quasi-maniacal deeds. 
An Act of Parliament was accordingly passed, ere the 
close of the Session of 1843, by which severe flogging 
was imposed as part punishment in all such cases. It 
had the desired effect. From the period of its enact- 
ment until now, attempts to take the Queen's life, and 
minor assaults upon her person, have been almost entirely 
unknown. 

On the afternoon of the 21st of November, the country 
was gladdened by the birth of the Queen's first-born, 
the Princess Eoyal, now Crown Princess of Prussia. 
The event occurred considerably before the period 
anticipated by the Queen's medical and other atten- 
dants, and preparations had to be made in a hurry. 

I 2 



116 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

!N"evertlieless, tlie Queen soon regained her accustomed 
health, and so rapidly that we find it recorded that 
on the day before that appointed for the christening, 
she and a lacly of the Court, exercising their strength 
and preserving their presence of mind, rescued the 
Prince from a most perilous if not fatal position. He 
had been skating, accompanied only by the Queen and one 
Lady-in-waiting, and had fallen through the ice in such 
a position that he could not possibly have extricated 
himself. 

Two days after the Princess was born, Mr. Selwyn, 
a gentleman with whom Prince Albert was reading 
English law and constitutional history, came to give his 
pupil his accustomed lesson. The Prince said to him, 
" I fear I cannot read any law to-day, there are so many 
constantly coming to congratulate j but you will like to 
see the little Princess." He took his tutor into the 
nursery, as he found that the child was asleep. Taking 
her hand, he said, " The next time we read, it must be 
on the rights and duties of a Princess Poyal." 

In 1841 Lord Melbourne was no longer Prime 
Minister. Sir Robert Peel, who had gained the largest 
Parliamentary majority which had been known for many 
years, reigned in his stead. The Queen made no difficulty 
about the Ladies of the Household now. Her tastes and 
feelings were consulted with great delicacy and con- 
sideration by the Premier, and the selection of the 
Duchess of Buccleuch in the first instance as Mistress of 
the Pobes, which post may be termed the female Pre- 
miership of the Household, was especially gratifying to 
Her Majesty. But her heart was, nevertheless, loth to 
part with the constant female companions of the first four 



BIETH OF THE PEINCE OF WALES. 117 

years of her reign. Thursday, September the 2nd, was 
the last evening she spent with them. At the dinner- 
table she could scarcely trust herself to speak, and 
she is reported to have shed bitter tears when she 
retired with her ladies. Everybody pitied the young 
Sovereign, and saw and felt the hardship involved. 
But it was an inevitable accompaniment of her high 
position. 

The heir to the throne adorned by Queen Victoria 
was born in the midst of one of the very darkest periods 
of English history. In 1841 the condition of the people 
had been declining from the beginning of the year. 
Operatives were on half time — at last they had no work 
at all — and the few who had had the means or the will 
to be provident, were living on their savings. Public 
meetings were being held to consider what was to be 
done, and public subscriptions were opened. Then the 
idle hands commenced to meet in large numbers, with 
a sullen look of despair, waiting for death or alms — a 
comparatively small number being employed at the ex- 
pense of municipal and other recognised bodies, in road 
making or road mending. Crime, which follows pauperism 
as surely and almost as rapidly as the obscene vulture 
pounces upon the carrion which is not yet cold, was 
rife ; murders came in multitudes, poisonings by whole- 
sale ; murders by trades unionists, murders by thieves. 
It was when this dark cloud lowered over England — a 
cloud never completely dispelled until the rise of the 
great and glorious Free Trade sun, five years later — that 
the Prince of Wales first breathed. A London Gazette 
extraordinary, which appeared on Tuesday evening, 
liovember the 9 th, ran as follows ; — 



118 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

Buckingham Palace, Nov. 9th. 

This momiia*, at twelve minutes before eleven o'clock, the Queen 
was happily delivered of a Prince, His Eoyal Highness Prince Albert, 
Her Eoyal Highness the Duchess of Kent, several Lords of Her 
Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and the Ladies of Her 
Majesty's Bedchamber, being present. 

This great and important news was immediately made known to 
the town by the firing of the Tower and Park guns ; and the Privy 
Council being assembled as soon as possible thereupon, at the Council 
Chamber, Whitehall, it was ordered that a Form of Thanksgiving be 
prepared by His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be used in' 
all churches and chapels throughout England and Wales and the town 
of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on Sunday, the 14th of November, or the 
Sunday after the respective ministers shall receive the same. 

Her Majesty and the infant Prince are, God be praised, both doing 
well. 

Tlie joy of the nation at the succession to the crown 
in the progeny of the Queen and Prince Albert being 
thus secured, was excessive. Upon the announcement 
of the happy accouchement, the nobility and gentry 
crowded to the Palace to tender their dutiful inquiries 
as to the Sovereign's convalescence. Amongst others, 
came the Lord Mayor and civic dignitaries in great state. 
They felt peculiarly proud that the Prince should have 
been born on Lord Mayor's day ; in fact, just at the very 
moment when the time-honoured procession was starting 
from the City for Westminster. In memory of the 
happy coincidence, the Lord Mayor of the year, Mr. 
Pirie, was created Sir John Pirie, Baronet. On the 4th 
of December, the Queen created her son by Letters 
Patent, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester : — " And 
him, our said and most dear son, the Prince of the United 
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as has been 
accustomed, we do ennoble and invest with the said 
Principality and Earldom, by girding him with a sword, 



AN EMBASSY FROM FRANCE. 119 

by putting a coronet on his head, and a gold ring on his 
finger, and also by delivering a gold rod into his hand, 
that he may preside there, and direct and defend those 
parts." By the fact of his birth as Heir-Apparent, the 
Prince indefeasibly inherited, without the necessity of 
patent or creation, these dignities — the titles of Duke of 
Saxony, by right of his father; and, by right of his 
mother, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Kothsay, Earl of 
Carrick, Baron of Benfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great 
Steward of Scotland. 

In the early sjDring of 1840, the distinguished French 
statesman, M. Guizot, came over to England, being sent 
hither by the French Premier, Marshal Soult, on a 
special mission with reference to those complications in 
the East, which culminated the following year in that 
war between the Sultan Mahmoud and his vassal 
Mehemet Ali, in which British tars under Stopford and 
"Charley Napier" played so conspicuous a part. His 
pacific mission was a failure, and from its failure dates, 
first the loosening, and then the severance, of the close 
relations which subsisted for eleven years after 1830 be- 
tween the Courts of St. James's and the Tuileries. 

King Louis Philippe had conveyed to M. Guizot his 
desire that he should take the first opportunity of re- 
calling to the Queen the intimacy which he had main- 
tained with her father, the Duke of Kent ; and Guizot 
resolved to remind Her Majesty of the circumstance 
when he was received by her on presenting his letters 
of credence. He prudently, however, asked Lord 
Palmerston, on whom, as Foreign Secretary, devolved 
the duty of presenting him, whether such a communi- 
cation would be agreeable. Lord Palmerston instantly 



120 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

replied in the negative. He stated that the reception 
would be a purely official formality, and gave hira to 
understand that the Queen would much prefer not having 
to reply to any speech. He therefore determined to 
abstain from making one. On the last day of February, 
he received a note at ten minutes past one from Lord 
Palmerston, stating that the Queen would be glad to 
receive him that day at one o'clock. Guizot immediately 
sent to Palmerston " to explain the delay, and his own 
innocence." He then dressed with all speed, and reached 
Buckingham Palace a little before two. Precisely at the 
moment of his arrival. Lord Palmerston's carriage also 
drove up. He told Guizot that the Queen's orders had 
been forwarded to him (Palmerston) too late. Luckily, 
the Queen had other audiences to give, which occupied 
her fully until the appearance of the two astute and 
rival diplomats. But another difficulty arose. There 
was no Master of Ceremonies at hand to introduce him. 
Sir Pobert Chester, who held that post, had received his 
summons, as tardily as that which had been sent to Lord 
Palmerston. That gentleman had not hastened his move- 
ments so rapidly as the active Frenchman. Although 
a breach of form, Lord Palmerston, therefore, undertook 
and performed the office of Sir Pobert. The Queen 
received Guizot " with a gracious manner at once youthful 
and serious." He remarked that the dignity of her 
manner cauised one to forget the smallness of her stature. 
On entering, he said, "I trust. Madam, that your 
Majesty is aware of my excuse, for of myself [that is, if 
the blame of unpunctuality rested with me] I should be 
inexcusable." She smiled in return, as if little surprised 
at, and quite used to, the want of punctuality. After all. 



M. GUIZOT AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE. 121 

in spite of Lord Palmerston's instructions to him, the 
Queen did grant him, in the strict and literal sense of the 
term, an audience. Though short, it was long enough 
to enable the Queen to chat with him, and inquire about 
his Sovereign, his consort, and their family. The Queen, 
of course, was warmly interested about the Orleans family, 
for one of the daughters of its head was the second wife 
of her uncle, King Leopold, and, therefore, her matri- 
monial aunt. So that Guizot did find and embrace the 
opportunity of reminding the Queen of the intimacy 
between his royal master and her father. 

As he was retiring. Lord Palmerston, who remained 
a moment or two with the Queen, after she had bid M. 
Guizot adieu, said hastily to him, ^' There is something 
more; I am going to introduce you to Prince Albert 
and the Duchess of Kent ; you could not otherwise be 
presented to them, except at the next levee, on the 6th 
of March, but it is necessary, on the contrary, that on 
that day you should be already old friends." These 
further presentations were, accordingly, made ; Guizot 
being struck with the political intelligence which the 
conversation of the Prince, in spite of his constitutional 
reserve, displayed. Guizot left the palace greatly pleased 
with his reception. As he passed through the hall, he 
saw the Master of Ceremonies in hot haste descendino; 
from his carriage, and "anxious to apologise to him, with 
temper somewhat ruffled, for his involuntary uselessness." 

An invitation to dinner at Buckingham Palace for five 
days after quickly reached him at his residence, Hertford 
House. He remarked on the want of animation and 
interest in the conversation, whether at the dinner-table 
or ill the drawing-room. Politics of any kind, home or 



122 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

foreign, were, apparently to his surprise, strictly avoided. 
When the gentlemen joined the ladies, which, throughout 
the Queen's reign, has been at a very short interval after 
the departure of the latter from the dining-room, they 
all sat on chairs round a circular table set before the 
Queen, who occupied a sofa. Two or three of her ladies 
engaged themselves in fancy work ; Prince Albert chal- 
lenged some one to a game at chess. Lady Palmerston 
and M. Guizot, " with some effort," carried on a flagging 
dialogue. The conversation being thus flat, M. Guizot 
took to looking at the pictures on the walls, of wliich 
there were but three, hung over the different doors of 
the apartment. He was very much astonished at the 
extraordinary contrasts in the subjects of these pictures. 
They certainly were most incongruous. One was Fenelon, 
the second the Czar Peter, and the third Anne Hyde, the 
discarded wife of James II. He asked one of his fellow- 
guests whether the combination was intentional or an 
accident ? But he could get no satisfaction on the sub- 
ject. No one had remarked the combination, and no one 
could tell the reason for it. 

At the levee which he attended the day following, he 
was still more astounded and perplexed. He thought its 
presentations and other paraphernalia " a long and mono- 
tonous ceremony." Yet it inspired this keen and philo- 
sophic student of men and manners with " real interest." 
"VVe shall allow M. Guizot, ere we finally leave his com- 
panionship, to express his views on this peculiarly English 
institution in his own words : — " I regarded with excited 
esteem the profound respect of that vast assembly — 
courtiers, citizens, lawyers, churchmen, officers, military 
and naval, passing before the Queen, the greater portion 



FANCY BALL AT COURT. 123 

bending tlie knee to kiss her hand, all perfectly solemn, 
sincere, and awkward. The sincerity and seriousness 
were both needed to prevent those antiquated habits, wigs, 
and bags, those costumes which no one in England now 
wears except on such occasions, from appearing somewhat 
ridiculous. But I am little sensible to the outward ap- 
pearance of absurdity when the substance partakes not 
of that character." 

As a companion picture of the Queen at home at this 
epoch of her reign, for the lineaments of which we have 
acknowledged our indebtedness to M. Guizot, we present 
these recollections of the Queen in her young married 
days, which we condense from a gossiping work by Lord 
William Lennox. The Queen had a splendid new ball- 
room built in Buckingham Palace, and nothing could ex- 
ceed the brilliancy of the entertainments which she gave 
there. To one of these, in 1842, Lord Lennox received 
an invitation. It was a hal costume, the first, he believed, 
which had ever been given in England by a Prince of the 
House of Brunswick. A second ball, in which, unlike 
the former, the dresses were confined to the reigns of 
George JI. and III., was given in the same year. All 
had to appear in powder — a somewhat trying ordeal 
to such ladies and gentlemen as did not possess fine 
features. 

Somewhat about the same time. Lord Lennox dined 
at Windsor Castle, at the great banquet given on the 
Ascot Cup day. A magnificent dejeuner had been served 
for luncheon on the course in Tippoo Sahib's tent. At 
the dinner in the evening, the first thing which struck 
one who was a guest for the first time on such an 
occasion, was the exact punctuality of the Queen and 



124 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

Prince. Although necessarily fatigued with the bustle 
and excitement of the day, they were in the drawing- 
room some minutes before the dinner was announced, 
and after a courteous greeting to all the guests, proceeded 
at once to dinner. Another observable peculiarity was 
that the Prince left the table twenty minutes after the 
ladies. The banqueting-room on this great occasion was 
St. George's Hall, splendid with its ceiling emblazoned 
with the arms of the Knights of the Garter from the 
institution of the order, and the portraits of our kings 
from James I. to George lY. At each end of the hall, 
buffets, seventeen feet high and forty broad, were set. 
They were of rich fretted Gothic framework, covered with 
crimson cloth, and brilliant with massive gold plate. Im- 
mediately opposite the Queen was set a pyramid of plate, 
its apex being the tiger's head captured at Seringapatam, 
and comprising the "Iluma" of precious stones which 
Lord Wellesley, the Governor-General of India, pre- 
sented to George TV. The table, which was laid for a 
hundred guests, extended the whole length of the hall. 
All down the centre, epergnes, vases, cups, and candelabra 
were ranged, the celebrated St. George's candelabrum 
being opposite Her Majesty. The hall was splendidly 
illuminated, and two bands of the Guards discoursed 
sweet music from a balcony. The Yeomen of the Guard 
stood on duty at the entrance. The repast, which did 
ample justice to the merits of the Queen's renowned 
cidsinier^ Francatelli, was entirely served in gold plate, 
and the attendance was so faultless that there was less 
bustle and confusion than usually attend a repast shared 
by a party of ten or a dozen. At a quarter to nine grace 
was said ^ and after the dessert and wine had been placed 



A STATE BANQUET AT WINDSOR. 125 

on the table, the Lord Steward rose and proposed, without 
remark, " The Queen." The Queen simply, when the 
toast had been drunk, bowed her acknowledgments. 
After a brief pause, the health of Prince Albert was 
drunk standing, as the Queen's had been, the band play- 
ing the " Coburg March." At half-past nine the Queen 
rose, and, accompanied by the Duchess of Kent, was fol- 
lowed by all the ladies to the drawing-room. In about 
twenty minutes all the gentlemen followed. The Waterloo 
Chamber was thrown open, and its rich historical and 
pictorial treasures were keenly inspected by groups of 
the guests. Amongst others of its chief ornaments, at- 
tention was concentrated on the swords of the Pretenders 
James and Charles, Prince Pupert's coat of mail, and the 
magnificent shield, by Cellini, jiresented by Francis I. to 
King Henry YIII., at the Pield of the Cloth of Gold. 
But the great treat of the evening was the appearance of 
Madame Pachel, who, with two or three Prench actors, 
gave morceaux from her principal impersonations. The 
success of her performance was the more conspicuous 
that it was entirely unaided by scenery, dress, or other 
histrionic accompaniment. A little before twelve the 
Queen, after addressing with the utmost grace some words 
of courteous appreciation to the great tragedienne, and 
bowing to the assembled guests, retired, leaning on her 
husband's arm. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE QUEEN IN SCOTLAND. 

Christening of the Prince of Wales — Manufacturing Distress — Queen's 
Efforts to alleviate it— Assesses Herself to the Income Tax — 
Kesolves to Visit Scotland — Embarks at Woolwich — Beacon 
Fires in the Firth of Forth — Landing on Scottish Soil — A 
Disappointment— Formal Entry into Edinburgh — Richness of 
Historical and Ancestral Associations — The Queen on the Castle 
Eock — A Highland Welcome — Departure from Scotland. 

The. Session of 1842 was opened by the Queen in person 
•with unusual splendour, which was enhanced by the presence 
of the King of Prussia, who had come over to stand 
sponsor to the Prince of Wales. The christening was 
performed on the 25 th of Janviary, and was attended with 
all due magnificence, and succeeded by a splendid banquet. 
Mr. Eaikes, in his amusing, valuable journal, thus records 
the event : — 

Tuesday, 25^^.— The day of the Royal christening at Windsor. 
The Prince of Wales is named Albert Edward. All who have been 
there say that the scene v.'as very magnificent, and the display of plate 
at the banquet superb. After the ceremony a silver-embossed vessel 
containing a whole hogshead of mulled claret was introduced, and 
served in bucketfuls to the company, who drank the young Prince's 
health. Very few ladies were invited. 

The Queen's speech of this year noticed with deep 
regret the continued distress in the manufacturing dis- 
tricts of the cGuntry, and bore testimony to the exemplary 
patience and fortitude with which it had been borne. 



NATIONAL DISTRESS AND EOYAL SYMPATHY. 127 

Many people "began once more to murmur at tlie con- 
tinued flow of gaiety at Windsor where the young parents 
still seemed to experience the first thrills of transport at 
the birth of a son and heir. Some of the lowest class of 
seditious newspapers began the practice of printing in 
parallel columns the description of the fancy dresses at 
the Queen's balls (the purchase and preparation of which 
must certainly have tended to alleviate the distress), &c., 
and reports from the pauperised districts, records of deaths 
from starvation, and the like. Among the unthinking 
classes such disloyal practices produced a very deep feeling 
of dissatisfaction. In the course of the year two attempts 
were reported as having been made upon the Queen's life : 
one, however, being merely the freak of an ill-natured 
boy, but the other was of a much more serious description, 
and cost its author transportation for life. Sir Robert 
Peel felt it his duty to discharge the part of a faithful 
Minister, and to counsel his Royal mistress to lessen the 
gaieties of the Court, even if it were only in deference to 
the prejudices of the starving and maddened poor. He 
neither roused nor augmented her fears, but gave her the 
counsel which the time required. The Queen at once 
acted, and without taking offence, upon the Minister's 
advice. At the christening of the Prince of Wales all the 
ladies of the Court appeared in Paisley shawls, English 
lace, and other articles of home manufacture. And when 
the christening was over a marked sobriety settled down 
over the Court, and continued during all the summer 
of 1842. Even the most querulous speedily granted that 
they had no reason to complain. 

This change in the sentiments of the public, especially 
its lower and more distressed portions, was promoted and 



128 LIFE OF QtTEEN VICTOEIA. 

accelerated by an act, equally tasteful and touching, of 
Her Majesty during this year. In the spring of 1842, 
Sir Eobert Peel, now thoroughly warm in his seat as 
Premier, commanding a large working majority, and 
not yet having awakened the hostility of the decidedly 
Protectionist section of his followers, inaugurated that 
splendid series of bravely devised measures in the 
direction of Free Trade, of which the great Anti-Corn 
Law Act of four years later was, so far as he was con- 
cerned, the culmination. In 1842, Peel proposed and 
carried a Budget which considerably lessened the burden 
of Customs imposts, but the chief merit and recommenda- 
tion of which consisted in the fact that it relieved the 
nation of the incubus of a host of very galling excise 
duties on such articles of common use as glass, leather, 
bricks, and soap. These beneficial remissions of taxation 
could not have been effected by him — for they entailed a 
heavy cost upon the revenue, already inadequate to 
meet the annual expenditure — but for the re-imposition 
of an Income Tax, a means of raising revenue which 
had been long disused, to the extent of sevenpence in 
the pound on all incomes above £150 of annual value. 
This, of course, did not affect the allowance made to 
the Sovereign. Nevertheless, Her Majesty evinced her 
sympathy at once with the prevailing distress and with 
the daring fiscal expedient of the Premier, by coming 
forward unsolicited to offer to receive an abatement of her 
income, based upon the precise scale of that imposed 
by Parliament upon her subjects. 

Up to the Queen's reign, the members of the House of 
Brunswick had never been peripatetic in their tendencies. 
The first two Georges had made frequent visits to their 



^IRST Vision TO SCOTLAND. 129 

patrimonial German electorate, but they evinced no 
desire to visit England beyond tbe immediate environs 
of London. George III. never passed out of England ; 
George TV. visited Ireland and Scotland each on one 
occasion ; but with these exceptions, hardly any British 
highways were traversed by his wheels during his reign, 
whether as Sovereign Kegent or Kegnant, except the 
great roads connecting his capital with Windsor, Brighton, 
and Newmarket. Vfilliam lY. was too old when he 
came to the throne to make it at all probable that he 
would evince any taste to visit any of the outlying 
portions of his dominions; nor did he do so. Queen 
Victoria, as we have copiously seen in earlier chapters, 
was from her very infancy habituated to moving about 
from place to place, and all along she has proved herself 
as proud as Queen Elizabeth herself of mingling with and 
showing herself to her people. 

For some time the Queen was understood to have 
contemplated a journey to the land of those Stuart 
ancestors by virtue of whose Tudor blood they, and the 
Brunswick line through them, and she through it, in- 
herited the British crown. In the autumn of this year 
all seemed propitious for the journey, and it was under- 
taken accordingly by herself and her young husband. 
Their first destination was the Scottish capital, and as 
the railway system connecting the southern and northern 
extremities of the island was yet far from complete, the 
journey was made by water from the Thames to the 
Forth, the port of embarkation being Woolwich, and of 
debarkation, Granton, a minor harbour in the immediate 
neighbourhood of Edinburgh. 

The exp acted visit was awaited and prepared for in 



130 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

the Nortli witli the ntmost eagerness of expectancy. 
Half Scotland seemed to have emptied itself into the 
metropolis to do her honour. In their preparations, 
burgher vied with noble, tartan-clad Highlanders withj 
Lowlanders in their more sombre blue bonnets and! 
hodden grey. On the 29th of August, the Queen leftt 
"Windsor, and proceeded to Woolwich, where she em- 
barked amid the acclamations of her metropolitan and 
Kentish subjects at an early hour of the same day. , 
In a Eoyal yacht, towed by a steam ship of war, the 
voyage was safely effected in the fine weather and on the 
placid wave of early autumn. In due time the Royal 
squadron arrived off Dunbar, which, with the Bass Rock 
and Tantallon Castle, form together a fine coup-d'oeil of 
romantic coast scenery and middle age antiquity, at the 
mouth of the Firth of Forth. Here it was met by large 
steamers filled by welcomers from Edinburgh and its 
neighbourhood, who greeted their illustrious visitors 
with loud huzzahs, and the strains of that National 
Anthem, which, though of English birth, was chaunted 
right lustily by Scottish lungs and lips. It was observed 
that Her Majesty, who came on board and acknowledged 
the vivas of her subjects, had paid the Scots the compli- 
ment of enveloping herself in a Paisley shawl ; and when, 
a day or two later, she made her formal entry past the 
church sanctified by the preaching of John Knox, to 
the Castle, in a narrow chamber of which her unfortunate 
ancestor Queen Mary bore her son King James, she wore, 
with even more conspicuously appropriate taste, a shawl 
of Stuart tartan. 

As she passed up the Firth, under cover of the gather- 
ing night, every peak on either side of the estuary, from 



LANDING ON SCOTTISH SOIL. 131 

St. A.bb's H^ad, which, she had left behind, away west- 
wards to the Pentlands, the Lomonds, and the Ochils, 
was surmounted by a blazing beacon — a splendid sight, 
and stimulative by contrast to the imaginations of those 
who recollected to what different uses beacon-fires on 
Scottish hills and Scottish Border Keeps had been put 
in earlier days of the international relations of England 
and Scotland. The fiery welcome was returned from 
the Eoyal yacht, by the letting off of rockets, and the 
burning of blue lights. 

At last the squadron came in sight in the roads 
before Leith, the anchor being let down — "a welcome 
sound," wrote the Queen — at a quarter to one o'clock 
on the morning of Thursday, September the 1st. Every 
one of the heights on or under the domination of which 
Edinburgh stands, had been crowded all the previous day 
with tens of thousands of spectators. All at once two 
guns from the castle, and a signal flag hoisted from the 
summit of Nelson's column, some 400 feet above the 
level of the sea, announced the arrival. The Queen slejr. 
and rested herself after the fatigues of her A^oyage on 
board the Royal yacht ; and she took her good but 
inalert subjects by surprise, by effecting her landing at 
an hour so early on the succeeding morning, that many 
of them, wearied by their recent vigils, had not yet left 
their couches, and even the corporate dignitaries were 
subject to the mortification of not having the honour 
to receive and welcome their Queen as her foot first 
touched Scottish soil. In their absence, that pleasurable 
duty was discharged by Sir Robert Peel, and the Duke 
of Buccleuch, whose guest she was about to be at his 
palace of Dalkeith, and who had ridden immediately after 

J 2 



132 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOBIA. 

her carriage, as Captain-General of her body-guard of 
Scottish Archers, on the day on which she was crowned 
queen at Westminster. Sir Eobert Peel told the Queen 
that the people were all in the highest glee and 
good humour, though a little disappointed at the non- 
arrival of the squadron the day before, as had been 
expected. 

With the extraordinarily auspicious fatality which 
has made " Queen's weather " so trite and proverbial an 
expression, the sun splendidly burst forth at the moment 
of her landing, and continued to shine throughout her 
progress through a portion of the New Town of Edin- 
burgh ; its bright freestone streets and terraces sparkling 
in the clear, sunlit air — past her ancient Palace ofi 
Holyrood, and so through fertile Lothian to the mansion 
of the princely head of the old Border House of the 
Scotts. When the customary ensign was hauled downi 
from the top of the rugged Castle Pock, and the Poyal 
Standard was hoisted in its place, the streets at once 
filled, and the loyal shouts of the crowds, who hastily 
assembled in no small force, sufficiently atoned for the 
absence of those whom the somewhat unexpected arrival 
balked for this one day of the delight of expressing their i 
devotion. 

The impression which her first view of Edinburgh 
made upon the Queen was very striking and most! 
favourable. She thought it "beautiful, totally unlike' 
anything else she had seen." Even Prince Albert, a great 
traveller while yet in his teens, and who had visited very 
many great and renowned cities, also said it was unlike' 
anything which he had witnessed. The massive stone 
buildings, with not a solitary brick used in their con- 



PIEST IMPRESSIONS OF SCOTLAND. 133 

struction ; the great dorsal fin of tlie High Street ; the 
magnificent situation of the Castle; the Calton Hill, 
guarded by mediaeval battlements and crowned by 
Choragic temples, with the noble back-ground of Arthur's 
Seat overtopping the whole, together impressed the 
youthful tourists as *' forming altogether a splendid 
spectacle." 

As the carriages drove through the city, the Earl of 
Wemyss, who marched by the Queen's side in his green 
uniform of a Scottish Archer of the Guard, pointed 
out to Her Majesty the varied objects of interest on 
the line of route through the eastern portions of the 
city to the Duke of Buccleuch's palace of Dalkeith. 
When they got into the open country, she was further 
astonished to find that not only all the cottages^ but 
even the fences dividing field from field, were also built 
of stone. The peasants by the wayside were equally 
objects of curiosity and interest, as they had "quite a 
dilferent character from England and the English." The 
close caps — Scottice, " mutches " — of the old women, and 
the long, flowing hair, frequently red, of the handsome 
girls and children, were equal novelties to the royal 
"Southrons." The Priuce was struck with the resem- 
blance of the country people to Germans. Other Scottish 
specialties appeared at the breakfast- table at Dalkeith, 
in the form of oatmeal porridge and " Einnan Haddies " 
— the first of which, at least, found immediate favour 
with Her Majesty. 

The grand ceremonial of entering the ancient city 
in state was reserved for the Saturday after the arrival ; 
the interval having been devoted by the royal party 
to quiet and repose in the magnificent domain of Buc^ 



134 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

cleuch, and drives to objects of interest in its neigli- 
bourhood. The line of the cavalcade, on this red-letter 
day, was up the steep ascent of the Canongate, High 
Street, and Lawnmarket, from the Palace of Holyrood 
(which the Queen rightly pronounced "a royal-looking 
old place") to the Castle which the Black Douglas 
scaled, where George Buchanan's pedantic Stuart pupil 
was born, and from the parapets of which various and 
shifting prospects are to be descried, which may be 
equalled, but cannot be surpassed, in any portion of Her 
Majesty's dominions. 

It was indeed historic ground along which the 
Queen passed this day. Every one of the stupendous 
houses of eight, ten, or even more stories, which formed 
a mighty avenue of stone on either side of the ancient 
causeway along which the steeds which drew her car- 
riage slowly and deliberately proceeded, had some tale 
of long gone days to tell, many of them being most 
intimately associated with the fortunes of her Stiiart 
ancestors. On her way she passed the site of that 
tower in which Darnley, her ancestor, was blown into 
eternity. Ere she left her Palace of Holyrood and the 
adjacent ruins of the abbey which was erected by that 
Scottish king who built and endowed so many abbeys 
that his subjects piteously exclaimed that he was a 
"saur saunt for the Croon," she may have seen the 
blood-stains of Rizzio, and the somewhat mythical por- 
traits of the Kings of the Houses of Kenneth, Bruce, 
and the Stuarts. On one side of her was the old 
mansion of the Regent Moray, on the other the spot 
where, for the first and only time, the boy Francis 
Jeffrey set eyes upon Robert Burns. Here was the 



THE QUEEN IN EDINBURGH CASTLE. 135 

ancient oaken liall wliere tlie Scottish Parliament sate, 
there the office of that Scottish journal of which 
Daniel Defoe, the staunch and loyal friend of William 
III., was the first editor. Here was the house in 
which John Knox lived and died^ there the church in 
which he preached with such fervour for that Protestant 
faith, with the establishment of which in Europe both 
lines of her ancestors were so intimately identified. And 
when she arrived on the esplanade of the Castle itself, 
she could look across the Forth on the one side to the 
minor mountain which casts its morning shadow into 
Loch Leven, from her captivity on an islet of which 
Scottish Catholic gentlemen so gallantly rescued her 
Stuart ancestress; while immediately beneath her lay 
the Grassmarket — at, once the Tower and the Smithfield 
of Scotland — where Montrose and Argyll expiated re- 
spectively their loyalty to the Stuart race, and to freedom 
of soul and speech. 

As the cortege passed up the streets along which 
Prince Charlie had passed when he held court at Holy- 
rood just ninety-seven years before, as she received at 
the site of the old Tolbooth the keys of the city from 
the Lord Provost, bending the knee beside his fellow- 
burghers, clad in the old costumes of the Trades, and 
close beside a guard of honour of Highlanders headed 
by the present Duke of Argyll ; or as she stood sur- 
veying from the topmost battery of the citadel her fair 
ancestral domains of Lothian and Fife, and the distant 
mountains which tower o'er Loch Lomond and the Tros- 
sachs, some such proud and pathetic recollections as these 
must have occupied and touched the heart of the 



136 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA, 

youngest and the mightiest monarch in Europe. Their 
closer acquaintance with Edinburgh increased the mingled 
amazement and delight of the Queen and Prince. Prince 
Albert pronounced the view of it from the margin of the 
Eirth of Eorth as " fairy-like/' " what you would imagine 
as a thing to dream of, or to see in a picture." He said 
he felt sure the Acropolis could not be finer, and the 
Queen at once recognised the appropriateness of the 
idealised metamorphosis of "Auld Eeekie" (Anglice, 
"Old Smoky") into "the Modern Athens." The Leith 
ticket-porters, mounted on flower-decked horses, with 
broad, ribbon- decorated Kilmarnock bonnets, and the 
pretty Newhaven fishwives, with their clear, peachy 
complexions and Danish costumes, were objects of peculiar 
interest. 

Space fails us to enter into details of the further 
incidents of this, the Queen's first visit to her Scottish 
dominion. Enough to say that she received in the 
Highlands, where she visited in succession not a few 
of her oldest nobles of Gaelic and Norman descent, 
receptions as rapturous as that which she experienced 
in the Modern Athens. The welcome, if it could not 
be more hearty, was at least attended with more 
picturesque accessories in the romantic region where 
the dialect and the "garb of Old Gael" still to a large 
extent prevail. At Dupplin Castle, at Scone Palace, 
where her ancestors were crowned, at Blair Athole, at 
Taymouth, and at Drummond Castle, she was entertained 
with equal splendour, and with the true and special ele- 
ments of "Highland Welcome." She may be almost 
said to have passed through a continuous succession of 



THE QUEEN IN THE HIGHLANDS. 137 

triumphal arches. Every chieftain brought out all his 
available clansmen, all in kilts, claymores, and Glengarry 
bonnets, to act as guards of honour. Balls, in which the 
national dances, performed by the best born cadets of the 
noble houses of whom she was the guest, constituted the 
chief feature^ alternated with deer-stalking, for the espe- 
cial "behoof of the Prince ; processions of boats on the 
lake through which rolls the Tay, a river only less rapid 
than the Spey ; and visits to places of historic interest or 
romantic beauty. 

The Queen was especially charmed with the beautiful 
situation of the ancient city of Perth, and the enthu- 
siastic reception which the multitudes there assembled 
gave to her. Prince Albert, too, was delighted, and 
likened the appearance of the place to Basle. At Scone 
Palace, which is within two miles of Perth, a very 
natural object of peculiar interest was the mound on 
which all the Scottish kings had been crowned. At 
Dunkeld the Highlands were fairly entered; and here 
the Boyal party were met and escorted by a guard of 
Athole Highlanders, armed with halberts, and headed 
by a piper. One of them danced the sword dance, with 
which the travellers were greatly amused, and others of 
them figured in a reel. 

The longest sojourn made in the Highlands was at 
Taymouth, the seat of the Marquis of Breadalbane. The 
scenery here again revived recollections of Switzerland 
in the memory of Prince Albert, who was particularly 
prone, in this and subsequent visits to the North, to 
trace resemblances between its scenery and localities 
which he had visited in the tours of his bachelor days. 



138 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

The reception at Taymoutli was magnificent, and quite 
captivated tlie illustrious guests. The Queen wrote in 
her journal — 

The coup d^ceil was indescribable. Tliere were a number of Lord 
Breadalbane's Highlanders, all in the Campbell tartan, drawn up in 
front of the house, with Lord Breadalbane himself in a Highland dress 
at their head ; a few of Sir Niel Menzies' men (in the Menzies red and 
white tartan), a number of pipers playing, and a company of the 92nd 
Highlanders, also in kilts. The firing of the guns, the cheering of 
the great crowd, the picturesqueness of the dresses, the beauty of the 
surrounding country, with its rich back-ground of wooded hills, 
altogether formed one of the finest scenes imaginable. It seemed as if 
a great chieftain in olden feudal times was receiving his Sovereign. It 
was princely and romantic. 

Wlierever tlie Queen rambled during her stay by the 
shores of Loch Tay, she was guarded by two Highlanders, 
and it recalled to her mind "olden times, to see them 
with their swords drawn." Walking one day with the 
Duchess of Norfolk, the Queen and her noble companion 
met " a fat, good-humoured little woman." She cut some 
flowers for the ladies, and the Duchess handed to her some 
money, saying, "From Her Majesty." The poor woman 
was perfectly astounded, but, recovering her wits, came 
up to the Queen, and said naively that " her people were 
delighted to see the Queen in Scotland." Wherever the 
roval visitors were, or went, the inevitable strains of the 
bagpipes were heard. They played before the Castle 
at frequent intervals throughout the day, from break- 
fast till dinner-time, and invariably when they went 
in or out of doors. When rowed in boats on the 
lake, two pipers sat in the bows and played; and the 
Queen, who had grown "quite fond" of the bagpipes, 



DEPARTURE FROM SCOTIJLND. 139 

was reminded of the lines of Scott, with whose poems 
she had, from an early age, possessed the most intimate 
familiarity : — 

" See the proud pipers in the bow. 
And mark the gaudy streamers flow 
From their loud chambers down, and sweep 
The furrow'd bosom of the deej). 
As, rushing through the lake amain, 
They plied the ancient Highland strain." 

On the 13th of September the return journey from 
the Highlands by Stirling, the ancient Castle of which 
was visited, to Dalkeith Palace, had been completed. 
Two days later the Queen ajad Prince re- embarked at 
Granton, en route for "Woolwich and "Windsor. 

Although a by no means excessive quantity of time — 
but a fortnight — was consumed in the tour, some idea of 
the rapidity with which distaDces were traversed, and the 
extent of ground covered, may be gathered from the fact 
that no fewer than 656 post-horses were employed. The 
Queen touched the hearts of the Highlanders — among 
whom Jacobitism remained, not as an element of per- 
sonal devotion to a fallen house, but not the less as a 
deep chord of pathos and poetry — by commanding a 
Scottish vocalist, at a concert given in her honour at 
Blair Athole, to sing two of the most beloved of Jacobite 
songs — " Cam' ye by Athole," and " Wae's me for Prince 
Charlie." When she once more embarked at Granton 
on her homeward route, she left memories of pleasure 
and affection which far exceeded the intensely ardent 
excitement which had preceded and greeted her landing. 
On the last day which she spent in Scotland, the Queen 



140 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

wrote in her journal — " This is our last day in Scotland ; 
it is really a delightful country, and I am very sorry to 
leave it." And the day after, watching its vanishing 
coast — "As the fair shores of Scotland receded more 
and more from our view, we felt quite sad that this very 
pleasant and interesting tour was over; but we shall 
never forget it." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

WHAT ENGLAND OWES TO PRINCE ALBERT. 

The Prince's Study of our Laws and Constitution— Two Misconceptions 
Outlived— His Versatility— First Speech an Anti-Slavery One — 
His Appreciation and Judicious Criticism of Art — Scientific Side 
of his Mind — As an Agriculturist. 

It will not be undesirable at this stage of our narrative 
to interpose a summary compendium of some indicatious 
of the manner in which Prince Albert, or the " Prince 
Consort/' as he was designated by Poyal Letters Patent, 
after 1857, discharged the high, onerous, and important 
duties to which his position called him. If the conduct 
and career of a husband be an integral and large part of 
a woman's life, it is tenfold more so in the case of a 
woman who is also a queen, and especially a queen-regnant 
in and by her own right. The large and enlarging 
breadth of mind which the Prince soon began to display ; 
the abundant tenderness of heart, which found at once 
indication and exercise in the admirable and diverse 
modes in which he advanced all agencies of public utility 
and associated benevolence ; the excellent mode in which, 
equally as a father and a husband, he evinced the warm 
glow of domestic virtue which animated his bosom, and 
the absolute and much-wanted scientific and artistic 
lessons which he taught more than any other man, during 
his life in England, to the somewhat uncouth people of 
whom he became a part— all these, and other elements 



142 LIFE OF QUEEIT VICTORIA. 

of character and conduct, indirectly increased the growing 
esteem in which the Queen was held, on her own merits, 
by her people ; for we might have had to look forward 
to a different national future, so far as a national future 
can be moulded in the sense of either making or marring, 
had the "father of our future kings" been other and 
lesser than what he was. Such a man as the Prince 
Consort must necessarily have wielded a very large and 
weighty influence upon the character of the royal lady 
whom he married. The history of her life, therefore, 
even if it were traced within narrower limits than those 
within whose compression our task must be discharged, 
would be insufficiently delineated without the introduction 
of such episodical but most relevant matter as that to 
which this chapter is briefly dedicated. 

Almost the first task which the Prince Consort under- 
took when he came amongst us was to set himself to an 
assiduous study of our laws and institutions. He secured 
the services of a most competent instructor in themes so 
important to one who stood so near the throne, in the 
person of the late Mr. William Selwyn, Q.C. Mr. Selwyn 
was a sound jurist, and under his guidance the Prince read 
such works as Blackstone, De Lolme, Hallam, Bentham, 
and Mill. He proved himself an apt student, for he had 
the capacity for study eminently developed ; and, besides, 
his position was one of singular difficulty and delicacy. 
He stood so near to the throne, amongst a people^ too, 
traditionally jealous of aliens, and especially of aliens in 
high places, that any utterance he might be called upon 
to make would be considered as almost, if not quite, 
emanating from the throne itself Although a certain 
cabinet intrigue, and one rare expression of his own — not 



PRINCE ALBERTS FIRST SPEECH. 143 

SO nmch. unguarded in itself, as wanting in explicitness, 
and capable of a certain misconstruction — did, on two 
several occasions, provoke in certain quarters sometliing 
approaching to national disfavour, lie soon outlived the 
misconception j and the universal sentiment of the people 
came round to the conviction that the Prince was faithful 
and loyal to the constitution to which he had sworn 
fidelity; nay more, that he had fairly caught, appre- 
hended, and absorbed into his being the very genius and 
spirit of the English race. 

The first speech the Prince made in England was 
at an anti-slavery meeting; the last at the opening 
of an international statistical congress. The former was 
delivered during the first summer of his married life. 
It is so brief, and it gives, as it were^ so thoroughly the 
key-note of his character, that our readers will thank us 
for giving it entire : — 

I have been induced to preside at the meeting of this society from 
a conviction of its paramount importance to the great interests of hu- 
manity and justice. I deeply regret that the benevolent and persevering 
exertions of England to abolish that atrocious traffic in human beings 
(at once the desolation of Africa and the blackest stain upon civilised 
Europe) have not as yet led to any satisfactory conclusion. But I 
sincerely trust that this great country will not relax in its efforts until 
it has finally, and for ever, put an end to a state of things so repugnant 
to the spirit of Christianity and the best feelings of our nature. Let 
us, therefore, trust that Providence will prosper our exertions in so 
holy a cause, and that (under the auspices of our Queen and her 
Government) we may, at no distant period, be rewarded by the accom- 
plishment of the great and humane object for the promotion of which 
we have this day met. 

We have already remarked the wide range of Prince 
Albert's endeavours, study, devotion, and consequent use- 
fulness. He presided at dinners of the Literary Fund, and 



144 LIFE OF QUEEN "VICTORIA. 

of the Eoyal Academy ; at the Trinity House most fre* 
quently, and at many agricultural meetings. Two of the 
best and most pregnant with good of his addresses, were 
delivered at the meetings of associations designed respec- 
tively for the better housing of labourers, and in behalf of 
the large and sorely tempted class of domestic servants. 
Now he presided at the Bicentenary of the Corporation 
of the Sons of the Clergy ; again at the two hundredth 
anniversary of one of our most illustrious regiments 
of Foot Guards. On art, as all were prepared to 
expect, he delivered ripe words of wisdom at the Royal 
Academy in Trafalgar Square, and in laying the founda- 
tion in the capital of his wife's Stuart ancestors of a 
new National Gallery for her Scottish subjects. Against 
the expectation, and to the loudly expressed surprise of 
all, save those who knew him thoroughly, he made ^ 
most admirable survey of the sciences and their uses, at 
one of the last meetings held ere his death, of the British 
Association for the Advancement of Science. Of art he 
was a judicious critic, as well as a munificent patron. It 
was at his special wish and option that the savant Lyon 
Playfair was made one of his Equerries ; and that a 
residence in Hampton Court Palace was put at the 
disposal of Michael Faraday. 

How much of mingled love for art and artists, and at 
the same time of criticism most kindly and sagacious, is 
to be found in these brief sentences, extracted from his 
great speech at the Royal Academy dinner : — 

An unkind word of criticism passes like a cold blast over their 
tender shoots, and shrivels them up, checking the flow of the sap, 
which was rising to produce, perhaps, multitudes of flowers and fruits. 
But still criticism is absolutely necessary to the deyelopmeut of art, 



THE PRINCE'S EULOGY ON HUMBOLDT. 145 

and the injudicious praise of an inferior work becomes an insult to ' 
superior genius. In this respect, our times are peculiarly favourable 
when compared with those when Madonnas were painted in the 
seclusion of convents ; for we have now on the one hand the eager 
competition of a vast array of artists of every degree of talent and 
skill, and on the other, as judge, a great public, for the greater part 
wholly uneducated in art, and thus led by professional writers who often 
strive to impress the public with a great idea of their own artistic 
knowledge, by the merciless manner in which they treat works which 
cost those who produced them the highest efforts of mind or feeling. 

And again, as a companion and worthy picture — which 
is none the less, but all the more, worthy of hanging along 
with that we have just presented, that the great truth it 
teaches is presented with such lucid simplicity — take 
these sentences explanatory of the scope and end of such 
institutions as the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, delivered by him as its President, at the 
1859 Congress at Aberdeen : — 

If the activity of this Association ever found, or could find its 
personification in one individual — its incarnation as it were — this had 
been found in that distinguished and revered philosopher who has 
been removed from amongst us in his ninetieth year, within the last 
few months. Alexander Von Humboldt ever strove after dominion 
over that universality of human knowledge wLich stands in need of 
thoughtful government and direction to preserve its integrity. He 
strove to tie up the fasces of scientific knowledge, to give them 
strength in unity. He treated all scientific men as members of one 
family, enthusiastically directing, fostering, and encouraging inquiry, 
where he saw either the want of or the Avillingness for it. His 
protection of the young and ardent student led maoy to success in their 
pursuits. His personal influence with the courts and governments of 
most countries in Europe, enabled him to plead the cause of science in a 
manner which made it more difficult to refuse than to grant what he 
requested. All lovers of Science deeply mourn for the loss of such a 
man. Gentlemen, it is a singular coincidence, that this very day on 
which we are here assembled, and are thus giving expression to our 
admiration of him, should be the anniversary of his birth. 



146 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

The Queen, wlio was staying at Balmoral, was very 
anxious about the manner in which her husband should 
pass the very severe ordeal of delivering an address to 
the assembled men of science. She recorded her high 
gratification at learning by telegram that "Albert's re- 
ception was admirable, and that all was going off as well 
as possible. Thank God ! " She invited the savans to a 
fete at her Highland home ; they accepted the invitation 
in great numbers ; and " the philosophers," of whom Her 
Majesty was not a little, and rather comically, afraid, 
were not only entertained with creature comforts, but 
the somewhat novel combination was presented of Owen, 
Brewster, Sabine, and Murchison, with their brethren 
of lesser renown, standing as spectators of contests of 
strength between athletes of the Grant, Farqnharson, 
Duff, and other clans. Some of the more distinguished 
guests remained over night, and at dinner they rejoiced 
the Queen's heart by "speaking in very high terms of 
my beloved Albert's speech, the good it had done, and 
the general satisfaction it had caused." 

Probably the capacity of all others in which the Prince 
became most generally familiar to the nation, was that of 
a practical, improving, scientific agriculturist; and we nse 
this word in its twofold sense, as embracing the growing 
of crops and the rearing of live stock. Almost from the 
outset of his career amongst us he commenced a series of 
scientific agricultural experiments on the farms in Wind- 
sor Park. He renovated the agriculture of the Park, 
as much as he confessedly did its landscape gardening. 
He became a constant and most successful exhibitor 
of live domestic edible animals at the great agricultural 
shows; his example in this field having been followed 



THE PRINCE AS AN AGRICULTURIST. 147 

since his death, to the great gratification of the agricul- 
tural interest, both by his widow and his eldest son; 
and, especially in the case of Her Majesty, with marked 
success. As a high and eminent authority on the subject 
has admirably put it — 

His was no merely idle, passing patronage or casual aid, but it 
was rather a pursuit lie deliglited in, and one he followed out with 
equal energy and advantage. The most practical man could not go 
that pleasant round from the Flemish farm to the Norfolk, and so 
back again by the Home and the Dairy, without learning something 
wherever he went. 

We must deny ourselves thfe pleasure of aught but 
passing reference to the admirable manner in which he 
discharged his academic duties as Chancellor of the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge, which post he held from 1845 till hi^ 
death, and about which we say enough when we remind 
or inform the rej..der that it was such men as Professor 
Sedgwick, the Yice-chancellor, who spoke of the exercise 
of his duties in this capacity in terms of the highest 
honour and estimation. Similar were his services to 
such noble institutions as Eton and Wellington Colleges, 
in both of which he offered prizes expressly calculated to 
encourage the pursuit of those studies which had been, or 
were most likely to be, ignored in their several cases. 
Horticulture, art exhibitions, the National Portrait 
Gallery, the Society of Arts, societies for improving the 
general condition and the housing of the labouring classes, 
mechanics' institutions — each of these constitutes a 
theme most pregnant and suggestive in connection with 
the Prince's name and memory. But we can do no more 
than recite and dismiss the bald catalogue of topics. 
Reserving for the appropriate chronological occasion some 

K 2 



148 , LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

brief remarks upon the character of the Prince as a 
private man, as contrasted with his aspects of character 
as a citizen and public benefactor, to which we have at 
present confined ourselves, we feel that we cannot better 
conclude than by condensing his opinions delivered in an 
address to the annual meeting of the Servants' Provident 
Benevolent Society, in 1849, in which the whole plan and 
doctrine by which he believed all really useful associated 
benevolence ought to be regulated was summed up. His 
view was that no such organisation was founded upon a 
right principle which did not require every man, by 
personal exertion, and by his own choice, to work out his 
owu happiness. Benevolence he held to be not really 
such unless it stimulated providence, self-denial, and per- 
severance. He used special words of warning against 
those so frequent lotteries of uncertain and precarious 
advantages — "really a species of gambling" — expensive 
convivial meetings, balloting for prizes, and electioneering 
contests on a small scale. "Let them always bear in 
mind," he proceeded to say, "that their savings are capital, 
that capital will only return a certain interest, and that 
any advantage offered beyond that interest has to be 
purchased at a commensurate risk of the capital itself" 

Such is a view, but all too summary and inadequate, of 
some of the obligations which the English, as his fellow- 
citizens, owed to that Prince whose life was so intertwined 
with and influential on that of their Sovereign. 



CHAPTEIEI XYII. 

FOEEIGN TEAVEL AND HOME VISITS. 

Visit to King Louis Philippe at Eu — A Loyal Corporation — Splendid 
Eeception of tlie Queen in France — Anecdote of the Queen's 
Eegard for Prince Albert — Visit of the Czar Nicholas — Home 
Life in Scotland — Visit to Germany— Illuminations of the Rhine 
— A Rural Fete at Cohurg, 

In August, 1843, the Queen and Prince Albert made a 
yacliting excursion round portions of the south coast and 
the Isle of Wight. Thence they steamed over to Treport, 
on the French coast, the nearest port to the Chateau d'Eu, 
a rural residence of Louis Philippe. On the arrival of the 
Queen and Prince from Windsor at Southampton, they 
were met at the end of the pier by the Duke of Welling- 
ton and other noble and official personages. It rained 
heavily, and as there was not sufficient covering for the 
stage intended to run on to the yacht Victoria and Albert, 
the members of the Corporation, like so many Paleighs, 
stripped off their red gowns in a moment, and the path- 
way was covered for Her Majesty's use, so that Queen 
Victoria, like Queen Elizabeth, walked dry-footed to her 
vessel. The undergraduates at Cambridge acted precisely 
similarly on the occasion of a visit in wet weather by the 
Queen and Prince to that university in this year. 

The subsequent visit to France was wholly unexpected 
in England ; and it was even said, and with some show 
of truth, that the Ministers were unaware of the intention. 



150 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

Of course we cannot speak with any certainty, but 
it seems but too likely that Louis Philippe intrigued to 
secure the aid, or at least the condonation, of the Queen of 
England in those astute enterprises which his busy brain 
was even now concocting, with which the phrases " Prit- 
chard and Tahiti," and the "Spanish Marriages" will ever 
remain associated, and which ultimately, and retributively, 
cost him his throne. Mr. Eaikes, who, be it remembered, 
was the intimate and bosom friend of the Duke of Wel- 
lington, then a Minister of England, has at this date the 
following entry in his Journal, which was published in 
1857, and is an acknowledged, and if not absolutely an 
indisputable, yet a most weighty authority : — 

Tuesday, 19 th. — Mucli conversation after dinner about tlie Queen's 
visit to Eu. I said, that the day before I left Paris, Kisseleff, the 
Kussian Minister, scouted the idea of this visit, and betted that it 
would never take place. Lord Canning remarked, as a singular coin- 
cidence, that Brunow, the Eussian Minister in London, asserted 
positively, on the very morning that the Queen embarked at Southamp- 
ton, that she had no intention of going to Eu. They both spoke, I 
suppose, as they wished. 

This, it may be said, is mere club gossip. Not so 
what we are about to quote, and which was written under 
the Duke of Wellington's roof :— 

Saturday, 2Srd. — I went down to Walmer Castle, and found the 
Duke walking with Mr. Arbuthnot on the ramparts, or, as it is called, 
the platform, which overlooks the sea. . . . After the company 
had departed at ten o'clock, I sat up with the Duke and Arbuthnot 
till twelve o'clock, talking on various topics. . . . I see that the 
Government was evidently opposed to the Queen's visit to Eu. It 
was a wily intrigue, managed by Louis Philippe, through the interven- 
tion of his daughter, the Queen of the Belgians, during her frequent 
visits to Windsor with King Leopold, and was hailed by him with 
extreme joy, as the first admission of the King of the Barricades within 



VISIT TO FRANCE. 151 

the pale of legitimate sovereigns. The Duke said, " I was never let 
into the secret, nor did I believe the report then in circulation, till at 
last they sent to consult my opinion as to forming a regency during 
the Queen's absence. I immediately referred to precedents as the only 
proper guide. I told them that George I., George II. (George III. 
never went abroad), and George IV, had all been obliged to appoint 
councils of regency ; that Henry VIII. , when he met Francis I. at 
Ardres, was then master of Calais, as also when he met Charles V. at 
Gravelines ; so that, in these instances, Calais being a part of his 
dominions, he hardly did more than pass his frontier — not much more 
than going from one county to the next. Upon this I decided that 
the Queen coiild not quit this country without an Act of Eegency. 
But she consulted the crown lawyers, who decided that it was not 
necessary, as courtiers would do." I myself (resumes Raikes) did 
not believe in her going till two days before she went. Peel persisted 
afterwards that he had told me of it ; but I knew I never heard it, 
and it was not a thing to have escaped me if I had. 

As for tlie reception at the Chateau d'Eu itself, it was 
of the most splendid character. One state ceremonial, 
however, is so very like another, that afte'r those, the 
descriptions of which we have already furnished, a recital 
of the gay doings at Eu would hardly be palatable. The 
purport of the whole may be summed up very briefly. 
The French monarch endeavoured to allure the Queen 
into compliance with his wishes, by every seduction which 
nature and art, and the most refined and gallant courtesy, 
could supply. Everything that wealth, luxury, and taste 
could furnish was to be found amid scenes of more than 
royal magnificence, o'ershadowed by elms that dated back 
to the times of Henri Quatre. 

But there was business to be done, and the Queen was 
fortunate in having with her such trusty counsellors as 
Lords Aberdeen and Liverpool. A compact about the 
Spanish marriages was then and there made between 
France and England ; a compact for the terms of which 



152 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

we are dependent, not alone upon English state papers, 
but upon tlie unimpeachable testimony of MM. Guizot 
and Eegnault. As the starting-point of the one court 
was that the Queen of Spain should marry a Prince of 
the House of Coburg, and of the other that she should 
marry a Prince of the reigning French house, of course 
no settlement could be come to except by an unequivocal 
compromise. Thus did Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot 
arrange it : — The King of Prance renounced all preten- 
sions, on the part of any of his sons, to the hand of the 
Queen of Spain. It was stipulated that the Queen should 
choose her husband from the princely descendants of 
Philip Y. ; this stipulation excluding the dreaded com- 
petition of a Coburg. As to the projected marriage of the 
Due de Montpensier, the son of Louis Philippe, with the 
Infanta Donna Maria, sister of the Queen of Spain, Louis 
Philippe agreed that it should not take place "till the 
Queen was married and had had children." On these con- 
ditions, the Queen of England and her counsellors waived 
all objections to the marriage of the Due de Montpensier. 
Louis Philippe kept his word by having his son married 
to the Infanta on the very same day, and at the same 
altar, as that on which her elder sister the Queen was 
married. 

In the summer of this year, the Princess Augusta of 
Cambridge, the Queen's first cousin, was married to the 
Grand Duke of Mecklenburg- Strelitz. The following 
extract from the diary of Mr. Paikes will be admitted to 
be far from the least amusing and characteristic anecdote 
of the Queen which we present in these pages : — 

Tuesday/, 2,Qth Sejptemher. — This morning at breakfast, the Duke 
said to me, "Did you hear what happened at the wedding ?" [meaning 



THE CZAR NICHOLAS. 153 

that of the Princess Augusta of Cambridge]. Eeplying in the negative, 
he continued, "When we proceeded to the signatures, the King of 
Hanover was very anxious to sign before Prince Albert, and when the 
Queen approached the table, he placed himself by her side, watching 
his opportunity. She knew very Avell what he was about, and just 
as the Archbishop was giving her the pen, she suddenly dodged around 
the table, placed herself next to the Prince, then quickly took the 
pen from the Archbishop, signed and gave it to Prince Albert, whc 
also signed next, before it could be prevented. The Queen was also 
very anxious to give the precedence at Court to King Leopold before the 
King of Hanover, and she consulted me about it, and how it should be 
arranged. I told Her Majesty that I supposed it should be settled as 
we did at the congress of Vienna. " How was that," said she, "by first 
arrival V " No ma'am," said I, " alphabetically, and then, you kno\f, 
B comes before H." This pleased her very much, and it was done. 

In June, 1844, tlie Queen was visited by her handsome 
and colossal godfather, the Czar Nicholas of All the Russias. 
The Queen received him with great magnificence, and 
there was a splendid series of entertainments at Windsor. 
The Czar made himself immensely popular with the female 
sex, by his magnificent gifts of jewels to the ladies of the 
Court j with the sterner sex, by the gift of a cup of un- 
common splendour, to be annually run for at Ascot. 
"Every one who approached him," says Sir Archibald 
Alison, " was struck by the manly dignity of his figure, his 
noble and serene countenance, and the polished courtesy 
of his manner, which threw a lustre even over the stately 
halls of Windsor." 

In September of the same year the Queen renewed 
her acquaintance with Scotland and the Scots ; this time 
again enjoying the ducal hospitality of Blair Athole, 
This visit was entirely dissociated from all State para- 
phernalia. The Queen was up before the sun. The mists 
were hardly cleared away ere she and the Prince were to 



1D4 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

be seen walking in the grounds. They were generally 
accompanied by the Princess Royal, mounted on a Shet' 
land pony. The Queen's piper played under her bed-room 
window at dawn, and dvery morning a bunch of heather, 
with some icy-cold water from the celebrated spring in 
Glen Tilt, was laid on her dressing-table. One morning 
a lady, plainly dressed, left the Castle ; who, though ob- 
served by the Highland guard on duty, was allowed to pass 
unnoticed, until after she had proceeded a considerable 
distance. But somebody having discovered that it was 
the Queen, a party of Highlanders turned out as a royal 
body-guard. She, however, signified her wish to dispense 
with their services, and they all returned to their stations. 
The Queen, meanwhile, moved onward through the Castle 
grounds alone, until she reached the lodge, the temporary 
residence of Lord and Lady Glenlyon, where, upon calling, 
with the intention, it was understood, of making some 
arrangements as to a preconcerted excursion to the Falls 
of Bruar, she was informed that his lordship had not yet 
arisen. The surprise of the servant may be conceived 
when Her Majesty announced who was to be intimated 
as having called upon his lordship. On her return, 
having taken a different route, and finding herself bewil- 
dered by the various roads which intersect the grounds in 
every direction, she asked some reapers to direct her to 
the Castle by the nearest way. They, not being aware to 
whom they spoke, immediately did so, by directing her 
to go through one of the parks, and across a paling which 
lay before her, and which she at once passed, and reached 
the Castle, a good deal amused, doubtless, with her morn- 
ing's excursion. In 1 847 the Queen visited, for the first 
time, the Western Isles and Hebrides. In 1848 she 



VISIT TO COEURG. 155 

rented Balmoral, wMcli site shortly afterwards purcliased, 
and from the date of its acquisition it has been her place 
of regular resort for at least one period of every year. 

On the 9th of August, 1845, the Queen and Prince 
Albert embarked at Woolwich to visit tbe land of her 
maternity and his natal spot. In the Belgian and Prussian 
territories, and in the Duchy of Coburg itself, they were 
rapturously welcomed. At Bonn, they were serenaded 
by a monster orchestra, consisting of no fewer than sixty 
military bands. At the same city they assisted at the 
inauguration of the statue of Beethoven. The same 
evening ' they witnessed at Cologne an illumination and 
pyi'otechnic display which turned the Rhine into a feu- 
de-pie. As darkness closed in, the dim and fetid city 
began to put forth buds of light; lines of twinkling 
brightness darted, like liquid gold and silver, from pile to 
pile, then along the famous bridge of boats, across the 
liver, up the masts of the shipping, and all abroad on the 
opposite bank. Bockets now shot from all parts of the 
horizon. The royal party embarked in a steamer at 
St. Tremond, and glided down the river ; as they passed, 
the banks blazed with fireworks and musketry. At 
their approach they glared [with redoubled ligli^;^. , and, 
being suspended, let the vessel pass to Cologne, "^hose 
cathedral burst forth a building of light, every detail of 
the architecture being made out in delicately coloured 
lamps — pinkish, with an underglow of orange. A few 
days afterwards the Queen steamed up the Rhine. At 
Stoltzenfelz there was another magnificent illumination 
and display of fireworks. The whole river, both its 
banks, its crags, ravines, and ruins, were simultaneously 
lighted up ; showers of rockets and other fireworks be- 



156 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

sprinkled tlie firmament, while repeated salvoes of artillery 
called the grandeur of resonant sound to the aid of 
visible beauty. 

At Coburg the Queen, as might be supposed, was 
still more cordially welcomed than at any of her previous 
stopping places. She and the Prince stopped at the Castle 
of Rosenau, and they occupied the room in which he had 
been born. A magnificent stag-hunt was got up for their 
entertainment; but what pleased the Queen most was 
being present at a festival entitled " The Feast of Gre- 
gorius." This was a species of carnival, in which the 
burghers and rustics, their wives and children, disguised 
in masks, indulged in innocent and exuberant gaiety. 
The Queen and her relatives freely mixed with the 
revellers. She talked to the children, to their great 
astonishment, " in their own language." Tired of dancing 
and processions, and freed from all awe by the ease of 
their illustrious visitors, the children took to romps, 
*' thread-my needle," and other pastimes, and finally were 
well pelted by the royal circle with bon-bons, flowers, 
and cakes. 



CHAPTEH XVIII. 

THE QUEEN IN IKELAND. 

First Visit to Ireland — Rapturous Reception at Cork — Queenstown so 
Denominated — Enthusiasm at Dublin — Its G-raceful Recognition 
by the Queen — Visit to the Dublin Exhibition — Encouragement of 
Native Industry — Visit to the Lakes of Killarney — The Whirligig 
of Time. 

For twelve years after her accession to the throne, the 
Queen was a personal stranger to the shores of Erin. 
Amongst the numerous fruits of the tranquillity restored 
to Ireland, after the disturbances and sedition which had 
culminated in the " Young Ireland " rising of 1848, was 
a visit paid by the Queen to her subjects on the west 
of St. George's Channel in the autumn of 1849. Im- 
mediately after the prorogation of Parliament, the Queen 
and Priuce Albert proceeded to Cowes, where a Royal 
squadron was ready to receive them. Under its escort, 
and being accompanied by their two eldest children, they 
steered for Cork. The Queen selected as the first spot 
of Irish ground on which to land, the port which, up to 
the date of her disembarkation, had been known as the 
Cove of Cork. She gave a command that, in com- 
memoration of the circumstance, the Cove should thence- 
forth be designated Queenstown. Having re- embarked, 
the Poyal party steamed up the beautiful bay to the 
city of Cork itself, where a magnificent reception 
9.waited them. The squadron proceeded at a slow 



158 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

rate. In spite of its arrival at a much, earlier date 
than had been anticipated, the news spread like wild- 
fire, and the country people assembled in prodigious 
numbers on the shores of the Cove, which were 
crowded with multitudes of excited Celts, whose wild 
shouts, mingled with the firing of cannon and small 
arms, and the ringing of bells^ made the whole scene 
animated beyond description. From Cork, the Queen 
proceeded to Dublin. There her reception was de- 
scribed by an eye-witness as "a sight never to be 
forgotten.'* 

■The Queen, turning from side to side, bowed low 
repeatedly. Prince Albert shared in and acknowledged 
the plaudits of the people ; while the Eoyai children 
were objects of universal attention and admiration. Her 
Majesty seemed to feel deeply the warmth of her recep- 
tion. She paused at the end of the platform for a 
moment, and again making her acknowledgments, was 
hailed with a tremendous cheer as she entered the 
terminus of the short railway line which connects 
Kingston with Dublin. On her departure, a few days 
later, an incident still more gratifying to the Irish 
people occurred. As the Royal yacht approached the 
extremity of the pier near the lighthouse, where the 
people were most thickly congregated, and who were 
-cheering enthusiastically, the Queen suddenly left the 
two Ladies-in-waiting with whom she was conversing, 
ran with agility along the deck, and climbed the ]3addle- 
box to join Prince Albert, who did not notice her till 
she was nearly at his side. Peaching out to him, and 
taking his arm, she waved her hand to the people on 
the piers. She appeared to give some order to the 



FIEST VISIT TO lEELAND. 159 

captain : the paddles immediately ceased to move, and 
the vessel merely floated on. The Royal Standard was 
lowered in courtesy to the thousands cheering on shore, 
and this stately obeisance was repeated five times. 

This gracious and well-timed visit to Ireland was a very 
significant proof of the Royal confidence in the unshaken 
allegiance of the bulk of the Irish people ; and it like- 
wise showed a just appreciation of the prudent energy 
and humane moderation with which her Ministers had 
so fortunately composed the recent unhappy tumults. 
Nearly thirty years had elapsed since a British sovereign 
had appeared in Ireland ; and between the visit of 
George lY. and that of Queen Yictoria, there was in 
common only the circumstance that both were royal 
visits. George, as King of Ireland, in 1821, was not 
the king of a free nation ; the victory of civil and 
religious liberty had yet to be achieved for and by the 
Irish j a minority engrossed the national Government 
and monopolised its emoluments of every degree ; the 
very existence of the people as a people had not been 
recognised, and the King himself was peculiarly and 
bitterly identified with the faction which held the race 
and their creed in thraldom. Thus, in 1821, the Crown 
of England possessed for Ireland little lustre or utility, 
nor did it evoke any well-grounded loyalty and devotion 
from its people. 

Queen Yictoria and her visit, on the contrary, 
represented those popular principles and sympathies 
which are the brightest jewels of the British Crown, 
and are now set firmly in it for ever. Her visit, at once 
august and afi'ectionate, was a visit to a nation which 
was not only loyal but free. "And joy came well in 



160 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

such a needful time." The joy was exuberant and 
universal. As the loyalty was rendered to a young 
Queen, it partook of the romantic and strictly national 
nature of gallantry. To witness that joy must have 
been the fittest punishment for the disaffected. 

" We do not remember," says an authority not given 
to rhapsody or exaggeration, " in the chronicles of royal 
progresses, to have met with any description of a scene 
more splendid, more imposing, more joyous, or more 
memorable, than the entry of the Queen into the Irish 
capital." The houses were absolutely roofed and walled 
with spectators. They were piled throng above throng, 
till their occupants clustered like bees about the vanes 
and chimney tops. The noble streets of Dublin seemed 
to have been removed, and built anew of Her Majesty's 
lieges. The squares resembled the interiors of crowded 
amphitheatres. Fagades of public buildings were formed 
for the day of radiant human faces. Invention exhausted 
itself in preparing the language of greeting, and the 
symbols of welcome. For miles the chariot of the gay 
and gratified Sovereign passed under parti-coloured (not 
par^y-coloured) streamers, waving banners, festal gar- 
lands, and triumphal arches. The latter seemed con- 
structed of nothing else than solid flowers, as if the 
hands of Flora herself had reared them. At every 
appropriate point 'jocund music sent forth strains of 
congratulation ; but banners, flowers, arches, and music 
were all excelled by the jubilant shouts which tore the 
empyrean, loud, clear, and resonant, not only above drum 
and trumpet, but above even the saluting thunders of 
the flbet. 

Perhaps, apart from the mere loyal enthusiasm of the 



VISIT TO AN IRISH NATIONAL SCHOOL. IGl 

occasion, the most important and significant incident 
of the visit was the following. It did not fail to be 
remarked that the first institution which Her Majesty 
visited in the capital was the central establishment of 
the Irish ISTational Schools — the first-fruits of Irish 
liberty, and the noblest possession of the Irish people. 
The Queen knew that in these excellent schools the 
youth of all persuasions were trained together, not in 
the love and pursuit of knowledge alone, but in the habit 
of tolerance and the spirit of charity. The Queen, by 
this visit, passed her personal approval and sanction upon 
a system which is equally the antithesis of sectarian dis- 
cord and the promoter of religious independence. Here, 
also, she discovered (or already knew, as was much more 
likely) that there was imparted the most useful, solid, 
and practical instruction, one of a character most precisely 
adapted to the wants, pursuits, interests, and occupations 
of the classes in whose behalf it was devised. In her 
survey and inspection of the iNTormal Schools, the Queen 
was attended by the Protestant and the Romanist Arch- 
bishops, and the representatives of other Christian de- 
nominations, friendly to the great scheme, stood beside 
and around her. That quite as much importance and 
significance as we have accorded to it was assigned to 
this visit of the Queen to the Normal National Schools, 
sufficiently appears from these closing sentences of the 
Report of the Irish Education Commissioners for 
1849 :— 

We cannot conclude our Eeport for 1849 without alluding with. 
pride and gratitude to the visit with which our Model Schools were 
honoured on the 7th of August, by Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and 
hj her Royal Consort, Prince Albert, accompanied by your Excellency. 



io2 LIFE OF GjUESii ViCTOSIA. 

We are convinced that tliis visit, so promptly and cordially made, lias 
left an indelible impression upon tlie hearts of the poor of Ireland, for 
whose benefit our system has been established ; and that they will ever 
regard the compliment as the most appropriate and decisive that could 
have been paid by Her Majesty to themselves. All reflecting men, 
whether friends or opponents of our institution, have not failed to see 
the importance of the step. By the country at large it has been hailed 
as an eminent proof of Her Majesty's wisdom and goodness, and as 
peculiai'ly worthy of the daughter of that illustrious Prince who was 
the ardent advocate of the education of the poor, when denounced by 
many as a dangerous novelty ; and of their united education on just 
and comprehensive principles, Avhen most men regarded it as im- 
practicable. , 

Four years later, when the first International Exhibition 
was held at Dublin, the Queen renewed her acquaintance 
with her Irish subjects. Making a somewhat lengthened 
stay at the vice-regal residence, she charmed the people 
by the freedom with which she mingled amongst them, 
and by the special attention and the bounteous patronage 
which she bestowed upon the little-developed but beautiful 
specimens of their indigenous textile industries in the 
Exhibition building. A third and a much more pro- 
longed visit was made in the autumn of 1861, the Queen 
having honoured Lord Castlerosse and Mr. Herbert ol 
Muckross, two gentlemen whose seats and demesnes are 
situate on the shores of the beauteous Lakes of Killarney, 
by accepting their hospitable invitations. Over the 
lakes, their islets, and their surrounding mountains and 
mountain passes, the Queen roved as freely and un- 
restrainedly as was her wont in the retreats in which 
she had year after year sojourned, after the turmoil of 
the London season, in the Scottish Highlands. It was 
observed with pleasure that, amongst other indications 
of change which the whirligig of time had brought round. 



VISIT TO THE LAKES OP KILLARNEY. 163 

Mr. James O'Connell, tlie brotlier of tlie "Liberator," 
dined more than once with Her Majesty at tlie tables of 
her noble and gentle hosts ; and the hounds that forced 
a stag to take to the Lake — one of the immemorial 
sports associated with Killarney — formed a portion of the 
pack which belonged to his two sons. 



1.2 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE WOKLD's congress OF INDUSTRY. 

Prince Albert the Inaugurator of International Exhibitions — Pro- 
poses, Unsuccessfully, his Scheme to the Government— To the 
Society of Arts, Successfully — First Steps towards Realisation — 
Objections to be Met — Perseverance of the Prince — The Royal 
Commission — The Prince's Speech at York — The Opening Cere- 
mony — The Royal Procession. 

As early as 1848 Prince Albert submitted to tlie Govern- 
in ent a proposal to establish an exhibition of works of 
industry in this country; but the members of the Govern- 
ment could not be induced to afford to it any of that 
encouragement which it was sought to obtain. Despair- 
ing of acquiring assistance in this quarter, but hopeful, 
courageous J and unbaffled, the Prince, who was President 
of the Society of Arts, in the following year betook 
himself to that more likely and congenial quarter. Not 
content, however, with following in the wake of previous 
Expositions which had been held in Paris and elsewhere, 
he suggested the happy idea of so extending its range as 
to include within it the works of industry and the art 
treasures of all lands. He convened on his own respon- 
sibility a meeting at Buckingham Palace, on the 30th 
of June, 1849, where he proposed that the Exhibition 
should be divided into four sections : the first being raw 
materials and produce illustrative of the natural produc-j 



a:HE GREAT EXHIBITION". 165 

tions in which human industry is employed ; the second, 
machinery for agricultural, manufacturing, engineering, 
and other purposes, and mechanical inventions illustra- 
tive of the agents which human ingenuity brings to bear 
upon the j^roducts of nature ; the third, manufactures 
illustrative of the results produced by the operation of 
human industry upon natural produce ; the fourth, sculp- 
ture^ models, and the plastic arts generally, illustrative 
of the skill displayed in such applications of human 
industry. 

When this proposal of a display so novel was first 
made, there existed no public enthusiasm to welcome the 
daring scheme, and all were in utter ignorance of those 
mechanical means of accomplishing it which to the 
present generation are so simple and obvious. It was 
met by countless cavils and objections without end. But 
the Prince had insight enough to discriminate between 
the real body of public opinion, lethargic and slow to 
move, yet ductile and malleable, and the artificial cla- 
mour of the marplots. Fortunately for the success of the 
great enterprise, the Prince possessed within himself the 
happiest combination of the highest station with those 
indomitable qualities of hopeful perseverance which were 
necessary to overcome the innumerable impediments which 
threatened more than once to mar the success of the great 
work. He succeeded in getting associated with him an 
active body of Commissioners, who, encouraged by the 
untiring industry which their illustrious President dis- 
played, persevered in their work; and one by one the 
practical difficulties disappeared before the clear and 
vigorous intellect which the Prince brought to bear upon 
their discussions. 



166 LIFE OF QUEEN ViCTOmA. 

But he remained, indeed, the Jacile princeps in 
maturing, as he had been in designing, the scheme. 
This is no mere language of eulogy, for the records of 
the Commissioners of the Exhibition have placed in print 
undoubted proofs that equally the completion with the 
progress, and the progress quite as much as the origin, 
of the Exhibition of 1851, were mainly due to the large 
conception and wise foresight of the Prince Consort. 
The public at the time knew but little, and many of its 
constituent atoms know but little to this day, of the 
amount of anxious thought and labour which he devoted 
to the success of the great undertaking that made the 
year 1851 memorable as a new starting-point in the 
industrial and social history of the world.' One impor- 
tant point, apart altogether from his personal merits, 
must never be lost sight of. His own high name and 
his close relation to the Sovereign, added a lustre to the 
Royal Commission which would otherwise have been 
totally lacking, and gave ground for that confidence to 
foreign powers which they displayed so signally and 
with so little stint. 

At a banquet held at York about six months before the 
Exhibition opened, the Prince in a long address, in which 
he replied to the toast of his health, indicated, though 
most modestly and unconsciously, at once the arduous 
nature of his preliminary labours and the zeal with 
which he pursued them. In the name of the Com- 
missioners, who had been invited to the banquet en masses 
he thanked his hosts for the proof thereby made plain of 
their earnest and combined zeal in the cause of the 
approaching Exhibition. He rejoiced that it was not a 
mere impulse of momentary enthusiasm which they 



PRINCE ALBERT AT YORK. 167 

evinced, but a spirit of steady perseverance and sus- 
tained effort, and lie assured liis auditors that tlie 
spirit of active preparation and hopeful faith was abroad 
in the country. Of this, he said, he was confident, 
on the ground of information which reached him from all 
quarters. And he added, and the event proved him to be 
right, his own personal conviction that the works in pre- 
paration would be such as to dispel any a^pprehension 
about the position which British industry would maintain. 
Of his brother Commissioners he spoke with loyal and 
chivalrous fervour. He thanked, in their name, the 
public for their uninterrupted confidence in those who 
were responsible for the management of the scheme ; and 
stated that there had been no difference of opinion 
between the central and the local committees, which had 
not, upon personal consultation and open discussion 
vanished, and given way to agreement and identity of 
purpose. So much for hope : the test of fruition had 
yet to come. 

At length the great event to which the whole civilised 
world had been lookino; forward for eiojhteen months 
with mingled interest and curiosity — the opening of the 
great congress of industry and art — was accomplished with 
a pomp and solemnity of ceremonial suitable to the dignity 
of the occasion, and the important social interests which 
it involved. Spite of all predictions to the contrary — 
spite of the faint-hearted forebodings which the wild 
confusion of the interior of the building in the last days 
of April excused, if it did not justify — the building was 
ready and furnished with the world's wares at the 
appointed time. At two o'clock on the last day of April 
the building was cleared by police and guardsmen of all 



168 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

exhibitors and their assistants, and the preparations for 
the opening day, already partially made, were pursued 
with the utmost zeal and vigour. 

Never dawned a brighter morning than that of the 
May Day which succeeded. The sky was clear and blue, 
the air as cool, crisp, and genial as a poet or artist could 
wish, and the sun came forth in undimmed splendour. 
London, reinforced by a multitude of visitors, was early 
astir and afoot. At six the Park gates were opened, and 
through them at once commenced to pour carriages from 
all parts of the metropolis and its neighbourhood, filled 
with gaily attired courtiers, cits, and provincials. The 
line of route was kept by mounted soldiers and police ; 
but their task was rendered almost perfunctory, so fully 
did all appear animated with the one desire to signalise 
this truly popular ceremonial with generous and kindly 
feeling, and a respect for the rights and duties of one 
another. The only houses from which a sight could be 
got of the royal procession were those at Grosvenor Gate 
and at Hyde Park Corner. These were crowded with 
well-dressed persons, of whom ladies formed the majority, 
up to the very roofs. The roofs of Apsley House and 
the park-keeper's lodge were similarly tenanted. The 
windows of Buckingham Palace, which had recently been 
new fronted, were filled with eager spectators, chiefly 
members of the Household, their relatives and friends. 
The centre balcony was occupied by the younger princes 
and princesses, attended by several ladies. 

Precisely at eleven the Life Guards commenced to 
widen the path for the procession. At half-past eleven, 
the band of the regiment playing " God save the Queen," 
the royal cortege set forth, amid the cheers of the vast 



OPENING OP THE EXHIBITION. 169 

assembled multitude. The procession was of anything 
but an ostentatious character. The eight carriages of 
which it was composed were drawn by but two horses 
each. There were no Gentlemen-Ushers, Grooms, or 
Yeomen of the Guard. Trumpeters there were, but their 
trumpets were silent. At a quarter to twelve the proces- 
sion reached the northern entrance of the Palace, and the 
Queen alighted amid the strains of the National Anthem, 
a salvo of artillery, and the lusty cheers of enormous 
multitudes on both sides of the Serpentine. 

Meanwhile, from nine o'clock, the appointed hour of 
opening, the building had been rapidly filling, all the 
visitors being remarkably well dressed, and a large 
majority of them ladies. " The first coup d'ceil of the 
building, on entering the nave, was grand and gorgeous 
in the extreme ; the vast dimensions of the structure, 
the breadth of light, partially subdued and agreeably 
mellowed in the nave by the calico coverings placed over 
the roof, whilst the arched transept soared boldly into 
the clear arch of heaven, courting, admitting, and dis- 
tributing the full efiVilgence of the noon-day sun; the 
bright and striking colours and forms of the several 
articles in rich manufactured goods, works in sculj)ture, 
and other objects displayed by the exhibitors, dissimilar 
and almost incongruous in their variety, were blent into 
an harmonious picture of immense grandeur by the 
attendant circumstances of space and light to which we 
have just alluded ; and the busy hum and eager and ex- 
cited movements of the assembled thousands infused the 
breath of life into a picture, which, at the period of the 
crowning incident of the day, became truly sublime." 

By eleven o'clock, after which hour none of the general 



170 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

public could be admitted, the Honourable Corps of 
Gentlemen-at-Arms, in tlieir gay uniforms, had taken up 
their places in the rear of the dais set for the Queen. 
This dais was covered with a splendid carpet, which had \ 
been specially worked for the occasion by 150 ladies, and 
on this was placed a magnificent chair of state, covered 
with a cloth of crimson and gold. High over head was i 
suspended an octagon canopy, trimmed with blue satin, , 
and draperies of blue and white. The trumpeters and i 
heralds were in readiness to proclaim the arrival of the 
Queen, and Sir George Smart stood, baton in hand, perched 
up in a small rostrum, " ready to beat time to ' God save 
the Queen ' for the five hundredth time in his life." The 
Commissioners of the Exhibition and the foreign ambas- 
sadors stood in the entrance hall, prepared to pay their 
respects to Her Majesty on her arrival. The Queen 
entered, leaning on her husband's arm, and being also 
accompanied by the Princess Eoyal and Prince of Wales. 
The Queen wore a dress of pink satin, brocaded with 
gold; Prince Albert a Field-Marshal's uniform; the Prince 
of Wales was in a Highland dress, while the Princess 
was clad in white satin, with a wreath of flowers round 
her head. A tremendous burst of cheering, renewed and 
prolonged from all parts of the building, greeted the 
announcement of the arrival of the Queen. 

Her Majesty was conducted to her chair of state by 
the Commissioners, Cabinet, and Foreign Ministers. As 
they stood around her chair, in their bright Court dresses 
and brilliant uniforms, a choir of nearly a thousand voices 
sang " God save the Queen." At the conclusion of its 
last strain, Prince Albert descended from the dais, and 
taking his place with his brother Commissioners, read a 



THE ADDRESS OF THE PRINCE. 171 

long address to Her Majesty, in wliicli he recited the 
history, plan, and intent of the magnificent and magnani- 
mous scheme which was so largely the product of his 
own heart and brain. These and other less important 
particulars having been enumerated, the Prince thus 
concluded : — 

It affords us nnicli gratification that, notwitlistanding the magni- 
tude of this undertaking, and the great distances from wliich many of 
the articles now exhibited have had to be collected, the day on which 
yoiir Majesty has graciously pleased to be present at the inauguration 
of the Exhibition is the same day that was originally named for its 
opening, thus affording a proof of what may, under God's blessing, be 
accomplished by good-will and cordial co-operation amongst nations, 
aided by the means which modern science has placed at our command. 

Having thus briefly laid before your Majesty the results of our 
labours, it now only remains for us to convey to your Majesty our 
dutiful and loyal acknowledgments of the support and encouragement 
which we have derived throughout this extensive and laborious task 
from the gracious favour and countenance of your Majesty. It is our 
heartfelt prayer that this undertaking, which has for its end the pro- 
motion of all branches of human industry, and the strengthening of 
the bonds of peace and friendship among all the nations of the earth, 
may, by the blessing of Divine Providence, conduce to the welfare of 
your Majesty's people, and be long remembered among the brightest 
circumstances of your Majesty's peaceful and happy reign. 

The Queen read a short reply, the tenor of which was 
warmly to re-echo the hopes and sentiments contained in 
the address of the Prince. The Archbishop of Canter- 
bury then offered up a consecratory prayer, v/liich was 
followed by the performance of the "Hallelujah Chorus," 
under the direction of Sir Henry Bishop. A very long 
procession, in which the Qaeen went hand in hand with 
her son, and Prince Albert with his daughter, was then 
marshalled, and having marched round the interior of the 
building, it was declared formally opened. 



CHAPTEH XX. 

THE WAR CLOUD. 

Briglit Hopes of Peace Dispelled — A.n Era of War all over the World 
— The Eussian War — The Queen's Visits to the Wounded Soldiers 
— Presentation of the War Medals — Crimean Heroes — The 
Volunteer Movement. 

'Fair and peaceful to all seeming were the prospects of 
humanity and the world when the doors of the Hyde 
Park Exhibition were closed for the last time, and while 
its materials v/ere being removed to be erected in more" : 
than their pristine beauty on the summit of one of the finest : 
heights which environ the sloping basin on which the 1 
British metropolis is built. But a cloud, it might be no 
bigger than a man's hand, but pregnant with ill, was on 
the horizon. The Exhibition closed a long era of peace 
in Europe and the world, an era which had been marred, 
so far as we were concerned, only by wars in our most 
distant Oriental dependencies ; and, so far as the Conti- 
nent was concerned, only by the aggressions of the 
potentates who constituted the Holy Alliance, by the 
revolutionary movements of 1848, and their sanguinary 
repression in the year following. Against the hopes of 
all, and the belief of most, good men and women, the 
Exhibition inaugurated one of the most martial terms of 
time which have formed a part of purely modern history. 
A year had hardly gone by ere Napoleon effected his coup 



AN ERA OF WAR. 173 

d'etat^ that fertile source of future evils— evils which are 
by no means yet exhausted. Then came the Russian 
War, which cost us in England a hundred thousand lives 
and at least a hundred millions of pounds. We had hardly 
celebrated, and rejoiced over, and illuminated our dwell- 
ings and public buildings in celebration of, the Peace of 
Paris, ere in India we had to put forth the utmost might 
of our imperial power to vindicate our " Paj " over Moslem 
and Hindoo, and to avenge the foul deeds done at Cawn- 
pore. When Prince Albert was, in the mystery of 
providential rule, stricken down in his prime, Italy 
and Austria were just beginning to recover from the 
effects of the contests waged between trained troops at 
the Yoltorno and by the Garibaldian guerillas in the 
Yalteline. The first message which was conveyed by 
the new-laid Atlantic cable was a message of good- will 
from the grand-daughter of George III. to him who sat 
in the seat of the rebel Washington. The first experi- 
mental cable had hardly been destroyed by the potency of 
old ocean, churlish and jealous of the invasion of his domain, 
ere that great contest broke out across the Atlantic, whicb 
brought about the abolition of slavery throughout the 
United States. Hardly had our young Prince brought 
bome his bonny bride ere the subjects who owed her 
father allegiance were called upon to hold their own 
against the mighty force wielded by a power, of which 
the queenly diadem must ere long be worn by England's 
dear and best-beloved daughter. The Danish War was 
hardly concluded ere the aggressor, returning victorious 
from his northern confines, turned his face to the south, 
and inflicted a catastrophe quite as telling and decisive 
upon that ancient dynasty, which has been more fre- 



174 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

qiiently allied with England in the great martial 
embroglios of the past than any other power of Europe. 

We have said that Napoleon's coup d'etat of December, 
1852, sounded the tocsin of that period of war which 
has lasted without sensible intermission from then until 
now. "With that coup d'etat Yictoria found herself by 
an accident somewhat closely allied. Some time after 
the close of the parliam^entary session of 1851, all Eng- 
land was startled by the sudden announcement of the 
resignation by Lord Palmerston of the seals of the 
Foreign Office, which he held in the first Administration 
of Lord John Eussell. On the meeting of Parliament in 
1852, questions were at once addressed to the Treasury 
Benches in both Houses soliciting explanations of the 
circumstances. In the Lower House the querist was 
Sir Benjamin Hawes. Lord John Bussell declared his 
perfect readiness to answer the question which had been 
put to him by Sir Benjamin Hawes, though he said he 
could not do so without entering into some details. 
These " details " were in the main as follows : — He com- 
menced with a full and frank acknowledgment of the 
energy, the ability, and the extensive knowledge of the 
interests of England in all parts of the world which pre- 
eminently distinguished Lord Palmerston, and said that 
he the more regretted, on that account, that circumstances 
had occurred which prevented his acting any longer with 
him as a colleague. He laid down at starting what he 
conceived to be the correct doctrine as to the position 
which a Secretary of State holds as regards the Crown 
in the administration of foreign affairs. He held that 
when the Crown, in consequence of a vote of the House 
of Commons, places its constitutional confidence in a 



DISMISSAL OP LORD PALMERSTON. 175 

minister, that minister is, on the other hand, bound to 
afford the Crown its full liberty — a liberty which the 
Crown must possess — of saying that the minister no 
longer possesses its confidence. This was the general 
doctrine ; but it so happened that with regard to Lord 
Palmerston individually, the precise terms were laid 
down, in 1850, in. a communication on the part of Her 
Majesty with respect to the transaction of business 
between the Crown and the Foreign Secretary. Lord 
John said he had been the organ of that communica- 
tion, and therefore assumed its responsibility. Its chief 
passage thus ran : — 

The Queen requires^ first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly 
state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may 
know as distinctly to what she is giving her Royal sanction. Secondly, 
having once given her sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily 
altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider 
as failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by 
the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that Minister. 
She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and the 
Foreign Ministers, before important decisions are taken based upon 
that intercourse ; to receive the foreign despatches in good time, and 
to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to 
make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent 
off. The Queen thinks it best that Lord John Paissell should show 
this letter to Lord Palmerston. 

Lord John went on to say that, in his view, Lord 
Palmerston had violated this explicit understanding, at 
least in two instances — one of a comparatively trifling, 
but the other of a most important character — since the 
conclusion of the session of the year previous (1851). 
The former had reference to some incautious remarks 
which were said to have fallen from the lips of the 



176 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

Foreign Secretary on the occasion of receiving a depu- 
tation of sympathisers with Hungary. The other related 
to Napoleon's coup d'etat of the 2nd of December pre- 
vious. The instructions given to our Ambassador at 
Paris by the Queen's Government were to abstain from 
all interference with the internal affairs of France. Lord 
John had been informed of an alleged conversation 
between Lord Palmerston and the French Minister in 
London, the tenor of which was repugnant to those in- 
structions. He had therefore at once written to him, 
but his communication had been treated with disdainful 
silence. Meanwhile Lord Palmerston, without the know- 
ledge of his colleagues, wrote a despatch to Lord Nor- 
manby, our Minister at Paris, in which, however, he 
evaded the question whether he approved the act of the 
President. He considered altogether that Lord Pal- 
merston had put himself in the place and assumed the 
prerogative of the Crown ; that he had " passed by" the 
Crown, while he gave the moral approbation of England 
to the acts of Louis JSTapoleon, in direct opposition to 
the policy which the Government had hitherto pursued. 
Under these circumstances, he had no alternative but to 
declare that, while he was Prime Minister, Lord Pal- 
merston could not hold the seals of ojffice; for he had 
"forgotten and nesrlected what was due to the Crown 
and his colleagues." 

On the 27th of March, 1854, the following message 
from the Crown was read to the Peers by the Lord 
Chancellor. It explains itself. Nor is it necessary for 
us to re- write here a single line of one of the brightest and 
freshest pages of the recent history of England. We had 
long been " drifting into war," to use Lord Clarendon's 



THE WAR m THE CSIMEA. 177 

memorable phrase, and at last the die was irrevocably, 
though reluctantly, cast. 

Victoria R. 

Her Majesty thinks it proper to acquaint the House that the 
negotiations in which Her Majesty, in concert with her allies, has for 
some time past been engaged with His Majesty the Emperor of All 
the Eussias, have terminated and that Her Majesty feels bound to 
afford active assistance to her ally the Sultan against unprovoked 
aggression. 

Her Majesty has given directions for laying before the House 
copies of such papers, in addition to those already communicated to 
Parliament, as will afford the fullest information with regard to the 
subject of these negotiations. It is a consolation to reflect that no 
endeavours have been wanting on her part to preserve to her subjects 
the blessings of peace. 

Her Majesty's just expectations have been disappointed, and Her 
Majesty relies with confidence on the zeal and devotion of the House 
of Lords, and the exertions of her brave and loyal subjects to support 
hier in her determination to employ the power and resources of the 
nation for protecting the dominions of the Sultan against the encroach- 
ments of Russia. 

Alma, Balaklava, and Inkerman had been fought and 
won, and the horrid winter in the trenches had not yet 
passed away. These days and nights of constant fighting 
had left us many fell remembrances of their grievous 
coming and going. The Eastern hospitals, at Scutari 
and within the lines of our camp, were choke-full of the 
wounded. Some few who could bear the pain of transii} 
were brought home, and no one in England was more 
solicitous of their welfare and wise and kindly tending 
than England's Queen. Her visits to the hospitals were 
as welcome as they were frequent. 

On the 8th of March, 1855, the Queen, accompanied 
by Prince Albert, and by the Duke of Cambridge, the 
Prince of Wales, and Prince Alfred, visited the military 

M 



178 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTORIA. 

hospitals at Fort Pitt and Brompton, Chatliam. Fort 
Pitt was til en the only general military hospital in 
England. As this hospital and that of Brompton con- 
tained together only 361 patients, it could not be con- 
sidered that the royal visit was elicited by the peculiar 
calamities of the place. But the immense extent of the 
hosjDitals in the East, and the sufferings of the poor 
wounded soldiers Jiying within these vast lazar-houses, 
had raised in the breast of all England a feeling of pity 
and horror. In this feeling the Queen most deeply 
participated. "While her visit to the only hospital in 
this country in which the sufferers by the war were 
received, was a gratification to her own kindly sym- 
pathies, and most cheering and solacing to the inmates, 
it could not fail to convey to the thousands of sufferers 
in the East, and to the kinsmen and kinswomen whose 
hearts bled for them at home, that no heart was fuller 
of pity than that of her under whose flag they had fought 
and fallen. 

The whole of the wounded who were in a condition 
to leave their beds were drawn up in chairs on the lawn, 
each having written upon it a card containing the name 
and services of the occupant, the nature of his wounds, 
and where they were received. The Queen passed along 
the line, saying a few kind words to those sufferers who 
particularly attracted her notice, or to those whose services 
were specially commended. She visited every ward, except 
that containing fever cases. A few days after, the Queen 
reviewed some cavalry and artillery at Woolwich. After 
the review, she visited the hospital, and saw the wounded 
artillery-men who had returned from the Crimea. Nor 
were these isolated exhibitions of sentiment or emotion. 



DISTRIBUTION OF WAR MEDALS. 179 

Upon every occasion during tlie continuance of tlie war, 
the Queen showed the most heartfelt sympathy with 
her brave soldiers ; visited their hospitals and transport 
ships; received the wounded at her palace, and sug- 
gested and liberally assisted in the establishment of 
permanent means of relief for them and their families. 
A beautiful letter of the Queen, v/hicli was accidentally 
made public about this time, showed that in the privacy 
of domestic life Her Majesty never forgot these sufferers. 
Indeed, she complained that she was not kept sufficiently 
informed of the needs of those who had returned wounded 
to their country. 

It was equally the Queen's duty and pleasure to 
reward conspicuous merit, as it was to do all that lay 
within the limits of her human and regal power to 
soothe the pangs of woe. One scene in which she dis- 
charged this high queenly function v/ill never be for- 
gotten by those who were privileged to witness it. The 
Queen determined to present with her own hand, to the 
officers of the Crimean army, and to a portion of the 
non-commissioned officers and privates, who had returned 
to their country disabled by their wounds, the medals 
which they had so dearly won. This act of grace and 
kindness deeply touched a sentiment that rested deep in 
the bosom of the nation, that had, indeed, there rested 
ever since — nay, long before— Elizabeth thrilled the heroic 
hearts of her people at Tilbury by saying, " I myself will 
be your general and judge, and the re warder of every one 
of your victories in the field." 

The presentation took place on the 18th of May, 
18.55. A royal dais was erected in the centre of the 
parade of the Horse Guards, and the public offices which 

M 2 



ISO LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

surround ifc were filled up witli galleries for the royal 
family and nobility. Within an area enclosed by barriers, 
were tlie intended recipients of the decorations. Without 
was a dense mass of spectators. When the Queen had 
reached the ground, the Guards, who had hitherto been 
in line, were formed four deep, and through the intervals 
thus opened the Crimean heroes passed, and in a few 
moments the Queen stood face to face with them. Each 
then passed singly, receiving his medal at the hands of 
Her Majesty, who presented them with a grace and 
kindness which brought tears to many an eye long 
unused to their effusion. The first to receive his medal 
was the Duke of Cambridge, who was enthusiastically 
received. Then followed other General officers, then 
the staff, and then in order, without distinction of regi- 
mental rank, came cavalry, artillery, engineers, and the 
line. 

The sight was one of the most thrilling ever seen in 
our metropolis, or in our times. The gaunt and pallid 
forms, scarred features, and maimed and mutilated limbs, 
brought home to the heart of the least sympathetic the 
ravages of war, and the cost and guerdon of bravery. 
Many of those who hobbled upon crutches, or walked 
painfully with the assistance of a stick, wore upon their 
arms the emblems of mourning for some brother or near 
3:elative^ now reposing by the waters of the Euxine or 
the Bosphorus. To each one of the wounded, whether 
officer or private, the Queen said some kind word or 
asked some kindly question of him. Many of the poor 
fellows were quite overcome by the tenderness of her 
compassion. Those officers whose wounds rendered them 
unable to walk, were wheeled past in Bath chairs. Sir 



THE VOLUNTEER MOVEMEKT. 181 

Tliomas Troubridge, who lost both feet at Inkcrman, and 
who has since died, was the first of these. The Queen, 
leaning over his chair, handed him his medal with the 
most gracious gesture, and conferred upon him the post 
of aide-de-camp to herself Captains Sayer and Currie, 
who were also wheeled past, received similar sympathy. 

After the soldiers, came 450 sailors and marines, 
under Admiral Dundas, who was the first to be deco- 
rated. The ceremony over, the non-commissioned officers 
and men of all services dined in the riding-school, 
where they were visited by the Queen, her husband, and 
their children. 

Closely and intimately allied with the intense warlike 
feeling which prevailed throughout the period which we 
have been traversing, was the rise, or rather the revival 
from our grandfathers' times, of the Volunteer movement, 
in the winter of 1858-9. This very notable phenomenon 
of modern days was entirely of spontaneous origin and 
popular outgrowth. At first the authorities looked but 
coldly upon it — wisely so, we think — until it evinced 
inherent elements of vitality and reality of purpose, and 
until it appeared that it was something more than a mere 
passing impulse. It was not until the 15th of May, 1859, 
that a circular from the Secretary for War gave to the 
movement official sanction, in the form of an authorita- 
tive permission by the Queen for the formation of volunteer 
corps. Ere a twelvemonth had elapsed, 70,000 men had 
enrolled themselves in England and Scotland ; and before 
the end of the summer of 1860, that number had swollen 
into 170,000. In many other and more emphatic modes 
the Queen graciously accorded her own personal sanction 
and her warm and approving recognition to the move- 



182 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 

ment. At a special lev6e, held in March, 1859, all 
volunteer oiEcers had the opportunity of being presented. 
At the first meeting at Wimbledon of the National Rifle 
Association, in July, 1860, Her Majesty founded an 
annual prize, in value .£250. At the same meeting she 
fired the first shot, discharging a rifle, which had been 
carefully adjusted to a target 400 yards distant. The 
cheers of the assembled thousands welcomed the impact 
of the bullet within a quarter of an inch of the bull's eye, 
and one of many Swiss gentlemen, who were present as 
competitors, felicitously remarked that Queen Victoria 
was now la 'preitiiere carabiniere de VAngleterre. 

The 23rd of June in this year was a still greater day 
for the volunteer army, and for the country, for it proved 
how earriestly the riflemen had devoted themselves to 
training and to discipline. Her Majesty having expressed 
her desire to review the young force on that day, arrange- 
ments were made by the War Office, whereby every corps 
that had attained a certain excellence might be repre- 
sented by its efficient members. The numbers and 
strength of the corps that presented themselves for 
inspection caused great surprise. Not only London and 
Westminster, and the densely populated metropolitan 
counties, sent ample contingents, but the energies of the 
railway companies were taxed to the utmost to bring up 
bodies of men from the west of England, the Midlands, 
Lancashire, Yorkshire, and East Anglia — even from 
distant Northumbria. The authorities ultimately found 
that they would have to make arrangements for placing 
20,000 men in review order. The review became a 
national spectacle, a general holiday was arranged, and 
an immense assemblage, provincial as well as metro- 



THE HYDE PARK REVIEW. 183 

politan, was assembled in Hyde Park. The Queen's 
stand was placed in tlie centre of a long line of galleries 
erected for the accommodation of about 17,000 privileged 
spectators, its situation being indicated by the Eoyal 
Standard planted before it. At different hours of the 
morning, the provincial corps, some of which must have 
travelled all night, were landed at the railway termini — 
the Durham Artillery, which had travelled farthest, 
being the first to reach King's Cross. The river steam- 
boats landed their freights at convenient piers : the 
suburban bodies mustered at their appointed stations. 
The whole operation of marching the respective battalions 
and brigades, amalgamated as agreed on, was performed 
with unerring precision and perfect ease, thanks to the 
intelligent zeal of the men and the clear heads of their 
officers. By two o'clock, 21,000, formed in one long 
line, extended completely across the park. The space of 
time which intervened between the successive arrivals 
of the corps and the commencement of the review, offered 
one of the most picturesque spectacles witnessed in our 
days. 

Exactly at four o'clock the Queen arrived on the 
ground in an open carriage. Accompanying her were 
the King of the Belgians, the Princess Alice, and Prince 
Arthur. The Prince Consort and the Prince of Wales 
were on horseback. The Queen was attended by a 
magnificent following of general officers, aides-de-camp, 
staff officers, foreign military men of distinction, and the 
Lords-Lieutenant of the counties which furnished contin- 
gents to the force on the ground. There were also in 
attendance on the Sovereign the Duke of Cambridge and 
Mr. Sidney Herbert, the official heads of the army. 



184 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTOEIA. 

Kemarkable amongst the group was Field-Marslial Lord 
Combermere, wlio had counted no fewer than seventy- 
years of military duty. As the cortege swept on to the 
ground the volunteers stood to arms, their bands playing 
the National Anthem. The scene now presented was in 
truth a magnificent one. On one side, from north to 
south, stood the thick lines of the volunteers, their some- 
what sombre ranks varied by masses of dark uniforms, 
with here and there a mass of scarlet, the whole thrown 
into relief by the background of the trees of Kensington 
Gardens. From west to east, dense lines of people 
extended, many being raised head over head by the most 
precarious and illusory elevations. From north to south, 
at the eastern end of the park, and facing the line of 
volunteers, a glittering line of military uniforms of officers 
and the gay dresses of ladies who accompanied them gave a 
varied and rich fringe to the human masses of the elite of 
the land who occupied the galleries above them. The green 
space so enclosed was dotted and animated by the bright 
scarlet, glittering cuirasses, snowy plumes, and jet-black 
steeds of the Life Guardsmen, who kept the ground. 

The Queen, followed by the whole of her brilliant 
Court, drove to the extreme left of the volunteer line, 
and thence slowly passed along the whole front to where 
the extreme right came close up to the lofty houses at 
Albert Gate. Then turning, she drew up on the open 
ground, the Eoyal Standard proudly waving above her. 
The bands of the Household Brigade being placed opposite 
her, the volunteers now began to defile past, between Her 
Majesty and the bands. The march was commenced by 
the mounted corps, few in number, but admirably 
equipped and 'v^th yem£!,rkably fine horses, TJie infantry 



THE KEVIEW AT EDINBURGH. 185 

were headed by the Artillery Company, to whom, as the 
oldest volunteer body existing, not only in England but 
in Europe, the priority has always been accorded. For an 
hour and a half corps after corps marched past, until the 
long succession was closed by a regiment from Cheshire. 
When the whole had passed, and all had returned to their 
original positions, the whole line advanced in columns 
of battalions, and, by signal, cheered Her Majesty with 
vociferous earnestness. After expressing her high satisfac- 
tion with what she had seen, the Queen left the ground 
about six o'clock. Before eight o'clock all the volunteers 
had been marched out of the park, and there remained 
within its gates only meagre remnants of the enormous 
crowd of spectators. 

The opinions of competent authorities on the credit- 
able manner in which this experimental review passed 
oft were of the highest character. The Commander-in- 
Chief issued a general order, by command of the Queen, 
in which His Eoyal Highness spoke in the highest terms 
of the efficiency displayed by the various corps, and of 
Her Majesty's appreciation of the loyalty and devotion 
exhibited by the volunteer movement. Later in the 
season the Queen, when on her customary autumnal 
route to Balmoral, reviewed in the Queen's Park, at 
Edinburgh, the volunteers of her northern kingdom, to 
the number of 12,000. 



CHAPTEE XXI. 

» 

THE QUEEN m HER HIGHLAND HOME. 

The Queen as an Author — " The Early Years of the Prince Consort" — 
" Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands " — Love 
for Children of all Eanks — Mountain Ascents on Pony-hack — In 
Fingal's Cave — "The Queen's Luck" — Salmon-speaiing, and a 
Catastrophe attending it — Erection of a Memorial Cairn — Freedom 
of Intercourse with Humble Highlanders — Visits to Cottagers — 
"Mrs. Albert" — Travelling Incognito — Highland Dinners — "A 
Wedding-Party frae Aberdeen " — A Disguise Detected.. 

Early in January of the year 1868, Queen Yictoria 
added her name to the distinguished roll of E/oyal 
authors. In the year preceding, there had been pub- 
lished a work entitled, " The Early Years of the Prince 
Consort," in which the life of her revered and lamented 
husband is traced from its beginning, down to the first 
period of their common wedded life. On the title-page 
of this work appears the name, as author, of General the 
Honourable Charles Grey, a gentleman who accompanied 
the Prince in a tour to Italy before his marriage, and who 
has ever since remained attached, in high capacities, to 
the Eoyal Household. This book, to which we have been 
indebted for important materials reproduced by us at 
certain of the earlier stages of our narrative, was pub- 
lished with the sanction of Her Majesty, and its com- 
piler received from his Royal Mistress most, if not all, of 



HAJPY DAYS IN THE HIGHLANDS. 187 

the materials which he very tastefully combined. But the 
Queen did not appear in it as author in proprid persond, 
save in the instance of certain occasional notes and addenda 
to which her imprint is attached. The work published 
in 1868, on the other hand, '^Leaves from the Journal 
of Our Life in the Highlands," is entirely, save a brief 
editorial introduction, from the Queen's pen. It is pre- 
cisely, as its name imports, a series of extracts from a 
journal kept from day to day, and extended from Her 
Majesty's earliest married days far into those of her 
widowhood. Special passages are^ in addition, given from 
similar diaries, which recorded yacht trips to the beautiful 
estuary of the Tamar, to the Duchy of Cornwall, and 
to the Channel Islands. There is also furnished a very 
sparkling and vivacious record of the Queen's first visit 
to Ireland, in 1849, which will be found duly recorded by 
us in a previous chapter. 

Nothing charms more in these pages than the love dis- 
played for all young people — for the writer's own sons 
and daughters, who are described by their home pet 
names j " Yicky," and " Bertie," standing, for example, for 
Victoria and Albert — for the infant child of a ducal en- 
tertainer, depicted as "a dear, white, fat, fair little fellow," 
and " such a merry, independent little child" — or for the 
children of humble cottagers at Balmoral, for " Mary 
Sjmons and Lizzie Stuart dancing so nicely j the latter 
with her hair all hanging down." When the Queen and 
Prince and the children land at Dundee, what charms the 
fond young mother most is, that " Vicky " behaves like a 
grown-up person, and is " not put out, nor frightened, nor 
nervous." And when a little grandchild of Lord Cam- 
per down presented the youthful Princess Boyal with a 



188 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

nosegay, the reflection that rose to the mother's mind 
was, that she could hardly believe that she was travelling 
as a wife and a mother; for it seemed but as yesterday that 
she, as a child, in the tours taken with her mother through 
England, used to receive similar childish tokens. She 
was at once put in mind of the time when she had been 
'Hhe little Princess." 

Accounts of rides on shaggy Highland ponies to the 
tops of mountains, and more lengthened incognito excur- 
sions in whatever vehicles could be procured at third-rate 
country inns, are thickly scattered over the pages of the 
" Journal." 

The Western Islands, as well as the Highlands, were 
at least on one occasion visited. Anchoring close by 
wondrous Staffa, the Queen disembarked, and was rowed 
in a barge into Fingal's Cave. This was the first time 
that the British standard, with a Queen of Great Britain 
and her husband and children, had ever entered the portals 
of this wondrous freak of nature, and the Gaelic oarsmen 
gave three cheers, the echoes of which from the inmost 
recesses of the cave were most impressive. 

On another mountain ramble, the Queen seated herself 
calmly, the youthful Prince of Wales lying among the 
heather by her side, while Prince Albert went to stalk a 
deer. He brought down a " royal," that is, a stag which 
has over a certain number of " tines " to his horns ; on 
which the somewhat superstitious Highland keeper at 
once said that "it was Her Majesty's coming out that 
had brought the good luck." The Highlanders all be- 
lieved that the Queen had " a lucky foot." 

Amongst other Highland sports which curiosity and 
great love of adventure led her to witness, was salmon 



SALMON-SPEARING IN SCOTLAND. 189 

speaiing, or " leistering." While the keepers were beat- 
ing the waters, the Highland gentlemen wading in the 
stream, and Prince Albert watching, spear in hand, on 
a boulder, the Queen watched from the brink this, the 
most exciting of all river sports, save, perhaps, otter hunt- 
ing. Suddenly she was alarmed, and with most abundant 
cause. Two of the men imprudently went into a very deep 
pool. One of them could not swim, and he sank to the 
bottom. There was a ciy for help, and a general rush by 
the Prince and others to the spot. The Queen was much 
frightened, and grasped the arm of the minister . in atten- 
dance, Lord Carlisle, in great agony. But Dr. Pobertson, 
the Queen's " factor," or agent over the Balmoral estate, 
swam in and got the too venturesome Gael out safely. The 
Queen, after this "horrid moment," had the satisfaction of 
seeing eight salmon speared or netted ; and was further 
amused by a curious piece of Highland courtesy — her own 
"men" carrying all the "men" of Colonel Forbes, a 
neighbour, dry shod on their backs through the water. 
They had come to see the sport, and the Queen's gillies at 
once insisted on their conveying them to the most favour- 
able side of the stream. 

A great day was that on which a cairn was erected on 
one of the heights overlooking Balmoral to celebrate the 
building of the new castle, which the Queen raised in lieu 
of the mansion which had stood on the estate when she was 
its tenant, and ere by its purchase she entered into pro- 
prietary possession. The morning was a fine one, and at 
eleven o'clock the Poyal party started for the ascent of 
Craig Cowan, where already nearly all the dependants 
were assembled. The Royal children, and all the ladies 
and gentlemen, accompanied the Queen and Prince. All 



190 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

the cliildren of the Queen's neighbouring tenants, and of 
her servants, were already on the top. The Queen laid 
the first stone, and the Prince the second, and then their 
children according to their ages. Then all the ladies and 
gentlemen of the Court placed a stone each. The pipers 
played the while, and whisky was served out to every one. 
It took an hour to build the cairn, and dancing and merry 
revels went on without intermission until its completion ; 
the very oldest of the women danced, and the youngsters 
were wild with glee. An old favourite dog sat reflectively 
contemplating a scene to which his veteran gravity pre- 
vented his indulging in any responsive and sympathetic 
gambols. At last when the cairn, having attained to the 
respectable height of some eight feet, was pronounced all 
but complete, the Prince climbed to its summit and placed 
the last stone, and three hearty cheers announced to the 
dwellers below the completion of the enterprise and 
edifice. The Queen concludes her chronicle of its 
erection in these words : — " It was a gay, pretty, and 
touching sight, and I felt almost inclined to cry. The 
view was so beautiful over the dear hills, the day so 
fine, the whole so gemuthlich. May God bless this 
place, and allow us yet to see it and enjoy it many a 
long year ! " 

The Queen and her family have always made it a 
practice to enter into the freest and most unrestrained 
conversation with the dignified, independent, courteous, 
and truly well-bred Highlanders. As she rode along a 
hill-side one day, " Alice and Bertie " accompanying her 
on foot. Prince Albert was conversing very gaily with 
one of the gillies, upon which the one who led the 
Queen's pony observed, " It's very pleasant to walk with 



THE QUEEN AKD SCOTTISH COTTAGEKS. 191 

a person who is always content." And when the Queen, 
following up her attendant's remark, said that he was 
never cross after bad sport, the gillie rejoined, "Every- 
one on the estate says there never was so kind a master ; 
our only wish is to give satisfaction." The Queen re- 
plied that that wish they certainly succeeded in fulfilling. 
And at a future date the Queen thus annotated that 
passage in her journal from which we have been borrow- 
ing : — " We were always in the habit of conversing with 
the Highlanders, with whom we came so much in contact 
in the Highlands. The Prince highly ajopreciated the 
good breeding, simplicity, and intelligence whicli makes 
it so pleasant, and even instructive, to talk to tliem." 

The Queen takes especial pleasure in visiting the old 
women's cottages, by some of whom, we hav j been told, 
she is not unfrequently addressed — or at least was so, 
when she was yet new to the north and the northerners 
new to her — as "Mrs. Albert." One old dame of eighty- 
six, erect and dignified as she sat at her spinning-wheel, 
received personally from Her Majesty the gift of a warm 
flannel petticoat. This was her pious and eloquent form 
of thanks : " May the Lord ever attend you and yours, 
here and hereafter, and may the Lord be a guide to ye, 
and keep ye from all harm ! '* Another aged pensioner, 
who was quite friendly, and shook hands with all her party 
of visitors, chose this form of benediction : " May the 
Lord attend you with mirth and with joy j may He ever 
be with you in this world, and when ye leave it ! " 

The Queen's mode of travelling as an incognita has 
never gone beyond a journey of three or four days' 
duration to some Highland district, in which the very 
amplitude of her retinue, even when abridged of its 



192 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 

usual proportions, prevented her passing otherwise 
than as a person of distinction, but in which it was 
possible to keep her queenly rank undiscovered. Some- 
times the mask was successfully worn to the end of 
the trip, to the great enjoyment of the Queen, her 
"gentle" attendants, and her servants. On one or two 
occasions, recognitions, unfortunate for the success of 
the very innocent plot, were made by persons to whom 
the Queen's face was familiar. On one of these trips, 
two shabby vehicles contained the whole party, which 
consisted of the Eoyal pair. Sir George Grey, Lady 
Churchill, and a small complement of servants. It had 
been arranged that the tourists should pass as Lord and 
Lady Churchill (the Queen and Prince assuming these 
roles), Lady Churchill becoming Miss Spencer, and Sir 
George Grey becoming " Dr." Grey. Once or twice the 
servants, who were of necessity in the plot, forgot their 
instructions, and blurted out "your Majesty," and 
" your Royal Highness ;" but, luckily, no one heard the 
faux pas. After a very long and fatiguing drive through 
a district remarkably denuded of habitations, they arrived, 
at nightfall, at an inn of very small pretensions. They 
alighted. Sir George Grey and Lady Churchill, faithful to 
the necessities of the situation, giving no indication, by 
any deference of manner, of the quality of their fellow- 
travellers. Being ushered into small but tidy sleeping 
and dressing apartments, they had their travel-stains 
removed, and sat down to such a dinner as the resources 
of the establishment afforded. The two gillies in attend- 
ance were to have waited at table, but their bashfulness 
prevented their undertaking duties so entirely out of 
their line ; so a damsel in ringlets, attached to the inn, 



THE QUEEN IN DISGUISE. 193 

performed the necessary duties. The repast consisted of 
a very delicate and delicious Scottish soup, known as 
*' hodge-podge" — which, to be tasted to perfection, how- 
ever, must be partaken of in early summer, when 
vegetables (of many kinds of which it is composed) are 
young and tender — mutton broth, fo.wls, " good" roast 
lamb, and " very good" potatoes. A bottle of wine the 
travellers had taken care to bring with them. They 
were less fortunate on the occasion of another similar 
trip, when all that could be procured was a couple of 
remarkably small and lean fowls, the remnants of which 
were sent down to the servants, with appetites rendered 
voracious by the keen mountain air. On this latter trip, a 
commercial traveller was much annoyed at his exclusion 
from the "commercial room," which was reserved for 
the servants. In answer to his remonstrance, the 
landlady pacified him by stating that the guests, who 
occupied her whole house, were "a wedding-party frae 
Aberdeen." 

When the cavalcade of the two " shabby vehicles " 
drove away, on the next morning, it was evident that 
" the murder was out," and that the inmates of the inn 
had discovered the quality of their guests, and commu- 
nicated it to the scanty population of the village ; for 
*'all the people were in the street, and the landlady 
waved a pocket-handkerchief, and the ringletted maid a 
flag, from the window." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE WIDOWED QUEEN. 

Unbroken Happiness of the Queen's Life up to 1861 — Death of the 
Duchess of Kent — The Prince Consort slightly Ailing — Catches 
Cold at Cambridge and Eton — The Malady becomes Serious — ' 
Public Alarm — Kapid Sinking, and Death — Sorrow of the People 
— The Queen's Fortitude — Avoidance of Court Display — Good 
Deeds — Sympathy with all Benevolent Actions — Letter of Con- 
dolence to the Widow of President Lincoln — The Albert Medal- 
Conclusion. 

Until 1861 the Queen had never known bereavement in 
the circle of her own immediate family. Nine children 
had been born to her, and, although it is understood 
that certain of her younger offspring do not possess that 
robustness of health which their elder brothers and sisters 
enjoy, yet not one had been snatched from their loving 
parents by the hand of the Great Destroyer. Early in 
1861 came the first pang of bereavement. The Duchess 
of Kent, ripe in years, one of the best of mothers and 
one of the best of grandmothers, a lady to whose memory 
all Britons now and hereafter owe an incalculable debt of 
gratitude, passed peacefully away with her descendants 
gathered around her bedside. 

When the Hoyal Family returned from Balmoral in 
October, it was observed that the Prince Consort was 
not in his usual health and vigour, but he had no pro- 
nounced ailment, and nothing approaching to serious 
alarm was for many weeks apprehended. In the course of 



LAST DAYS OF PEINCE ALBEET. 195 

the succeeding month he went to Cambridge, to visit the 
Prince of Wales, who was a student at that University, 
as he had previously been for a short time at Oxford. 
He went out shooting while there, got wet, and, as the 
Duke of Kent had done, was so imprudent as to sit down 
without removing his wet clothes. JSTevertheless, on his 
return to Windsor, he pursued his usual daily avocations. 
About the beginning of December he appeared in public 
with the Queen, and reviewed the volunteer corps raised 
among the Eton boys. The rain fell fast, and the Prince 
was seized on the re^dew ground with acute pains in the 
back. Pev^erish symptoms supervened, and the doctors 
ordered confinement to his room. Still no alarm was 
entertained, and it was believed that he suffered only 
from a passing malady. The general public knew nothing 
of the ailment until some solicitude was caused by a bul- 
letin, which appeared in the Court Circular of the 8th 
December : — 

His Eoyal Highness the Prince Consort has been confined to his 
apartments for the past week, suffering from a feverish cold, with 
pains in his limbs. Within the last few days the feverish symptoms 
have rather increased, and are likely to continue for some time longer, 
but there are no unfavourable symptoms. The party which had been 
invited by Her Majesty's command to assemble at Windsor Castle on 
Monday has been countermanded. 

Not until the 13th was any bulletin issued which caused 
real anxiety and alarm. On the day following, the morning 
papers contained the ominous announcement that he had 
" passed a restless night, and the symptoms had assumed 
an unfavourable character during the day." The Times, 
in a leading article, while hoping for the best, startled all 
by its statement that " the fever which has attacked him 

N 2 



196 LIFE OF QUEEN VICTOKIA. 

is a weakening and wearying malady." On the morning 
of Saturday tliere was a favourable turn, but which was 
soon followed by a most serious relapse. About four p.m. 
the fever assumed a malignant typhoid type, and he began 
to sink with such rapidity that all stimu.lants failed to 
check the quick access of weakness. At nine o'clock a 
telegram was received in the City that the Prince was 
dying fast, and at a few minutes before eleven all was over. 
"On Saturday night last," said one of the daily journals 
ot the succeeding Monday, "at an hour when the shops 
in the metropolis had hardly closed, when the theatres 
were delighting thousands of pleasure-seekers, when the 
markets were thronged with humble buyers seeking to 
provide for their Sunday requirements, when the foot- 
passengers yet lingered in the half-emptied streets, allured 
by the soft air of a calm, clear evening, a family in which 
the whole interest of this great nation is centred were 
assembled, less than five-and-twenty miles away, in the 
Royal residence at Windsor, in the deepest affliction 
around the death-bed of a beloved husband and father. 
In the prime of life, without — so to speak — a longer 
warning than that of forty- eight hours, Prince Albert, 
the Consort of our Queen, the parent of our future 
Monarchs, has been stricken down by a short but malig- 
nant disorder." Shortly after midnight, the great bell of 
St. Paul's, which is never tolled except upon the death of 
a member of the Poyal Family, boomed the fatal tidings 
over a district extending, in the quietude of the early 
Sabbath morn, for miles around the metropolis. 

The Queen, the Princess Alice, and the Prince of 
Wales, who had been hastily summoned from Cambridge, 
sat with the dying good man until the last. After the 



DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT. 197 

closing scene tlie Queen supported herself nobly, and after 
a short burst of uncontrollable grief, she is said to have 
gathered her children around her, and addressed them in 
the most solemn and affectionate terms. " She declared 
to her family that, though she felt crushed by the loss of 
one who had been her companion through life, she knew 
how much was expected of her, and she accordingly 
called on her children to give her their assistance, in 
order that she might do her duty to them and the 
country." The Duke of Cambridge and many gentlemen 
connected with the Court, with six of the Royal children, 
were present at the Prince's death. In answer to some 
one of those present who tenderly offered condolence, the 
Queen is reported to have said : " I suppose I must not 
fret too much, for many poor women have to go through 
the same trial.'^ 

The sad news became generally known in the metro- 
polis and in the great cities of the empire early on Sunday. 
Unusually large congregations filled the churches and 
chapels at morning service. "There was a solemn 
eloquence in the subdued but distinctly perceptible sensa- 
tion which crept over the congregations in the principal 
churches when, in the prayer for the Koyal family, the 
Prince Consort's name was omitted. It was well 
remarked, if ever the phrase was permissible, it might 
then be truly said that the name of the departed Prince 
was truly conspicuous by its absence, for never was the 
gap that this event has made in our national life, as well 
as in the domestic happiness of the Palace, more vividly 
realised than when the name that has mingled so 
familiarly in our prayers for the last twenty years was, 
for the first time, left out of our public devotions." Many 



198 LIFE OP QUEEN VICTOKIA. 

thousands of mute pious petitions were specially addressed 
to Heaven for the bereaved widow and orphans when 
the prayer of the Litany for " all who are desolate and 
oppressed*' was uttered, and in the chapels of Noncon- 
formists the extemporaneous prayers of the ministei-s 
gave articulate expression to the heartfelt orisons of the 
silent worshippers. Every one thought of and felt for 
the Queen, and during the week intervening between the 
death and the funeral, the question on every one's lips 
in all places of resort, and where men and women con- 
gregated, was, " How will the Queen bear it 1 " 

Prince Albert sleeps the long sleep at Frogmore, to 
which his mortal remains were borne reverently, and 
without ostentation, as he himself would have wished. 
The inscription on his coffin ran thus : — 

DEPOSITUM 

iLLUSTKissna ET Gelsissimi Alberti, 

PRINCrPIS CONSORTIS, 

DUCIS SAXONI^, 

DE SAXE-COBURG ET GOTHA PRINCIPIS, 

NOBILISSIMI ORDINIS PERISCELIDIS EQUITIS, 

AUGUSTISSIM-JE ET POTBNTISSIM^ VICTORLaj REGIN^ 

CONJDGIS PERCARISSIMI, 

OBUT DIE DECIMO QUARTO DECEMBRIS, MDCCCLXI. 

ANNO -aSTATIS SU^ XLm. 

[Here lies the most illustrious and exalted Albert, Prince Consort, 
Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Knight of the 
Most Noble Order of the Garter, the most beloved husband of the 
most august and potent Queen Victoria. He died on the fourteenth 
day of December, 1861, in the forty-third year of his age.] 

Thus died and was buried a great and a good man, 
one of the most useful men of his age, one to whom 
Englaad owes much. 



THE QUEEN IN HER WIDOWHOOD. 199 

'* For that he loved our Queen, 

And, for her sake, the people of her love. 
Few and far distant names shall rank above 
His own, where England's cherish'd names are seen.' 

The Queen lias ever since her great bereavement most 
constantly and piously revered the Prince's memory. 
Her reverence has taken the practical form of the deepest 
sympathy with the woes and sorrows of the poorest and 
humblest of her subjects. She has eschewed the pomp 
and ceremony of State, and deliberately set herself to 
discover and soothe sorrow, and to recognise all good 
deeds of the same character performed by others. When 
the noble Peabody bestowed his princely act of munifi- 
cence on the poor of London, no recognition was made of 
his generosity more signal than that made by the Queen. 
She has been among the first to help by loving words and 
by practical aid the sufierers by any great national 
calamity — a Lancashire famine, a shipwreck or railway 
accident, a colliery explosion, a catastrophe caused by mad 
and futile sedition. E,eady and sympathetic coudolence 
has especially flowed from her to those bereaved like her- 
self, and when President Lincoln perished at his post, the 
Queen sent to his widow a long letter which her son 
described as "the outgushing of a woman's heartfelt 
sympathy," and which, with rare and commendable good 
taste, has never been exposed to the public eye. Most 
fitly has she specially commemorated her husband's 
memory by the institution of a fit companion and com- 
plement to the Victoria Cross, the "Albert Medal," which 
is bestowed on brave men who save lives from the " Peril 
of the Sea or Shipwreck." 

Many consolations have been vouchsafed by Heaven 



200 LIFE OF QUEEN" VICTORIA. 

to the widowed Queen. Since she lost her great stay and 
support her realm, has for the most part been prosperous 
and contented. Though environed by many troubles, and 
though the clang of battle has shaken the world, the dove 
of peace has benignantly hovered o'er Britain. Much 
advance has been made in those fields of social, moral, 
political, and educational improvement which were so 
dear to Albert's heart, as they have always been to her 
own. And shortly before the period when these pages are 
first given to the public, the political progress of the 
nation has received a great stimulus, such as is given in 
a people's history only at rare and long intervals. Her 
children grow up from youth to maturity, and from 
maturity to maternity and' paternity, without a slur upon 
their fair names, and are, with tho^e to whom the elder 
of them have united themselves in wedlock, all that a 
proud mother's heart could wish. God has stricken her, 
but He has proved also an Infinite Healer and Solacer. 
Ours be it to add to the ordinary motives of patriotism 
those more tender and touching infiuences which arise 
from the recollection that our Queen is now, as said that 
Queen of England whose subjects were Shakespeare and 
Bacon, Spenser and Sidney — " Married to her People." 



THE END. 



CASSELL, PETTEK, AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGB WOKKS, LONDON, B.C. 



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